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December 19, 2024
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The healthcare ecosystem has seen a massive digital transformation in the past couple of years. Not surprisingly, organizations have been razor-focused on keeping current on the latest developments or emerging trends in the field. Constantly adjusting existing strategies to engage with a more digitally-savvy consumer in the post-pandemic world, in real-time, is a priority for many.
Evidence continues to accumulate that digital health works, validating approaches. Patients benefited from virtual care solutions during the pandemic, and they are not going to give it up easily. Consumer expectations continue to grow for more patient-driven care management options. Capitalizing on the desire for the convenience that digital affords, consumer brands including Amazon, CVS, and Best Buy are heavily investing in retail health, with Forrester Research forecasting that retail health clinics will double their market share in primary care. This offers new opportunities and will force traditional healthcare players to push forward with greater adoption of digital health solutions.
On “The Digital Patient” – rated one of the top 30 Best Digital Health Podcasts by FeedSpot – we focus on just that. Hosts Dr. Joshua Liu, Co-founder and CEO of SeamlessMD, and Alan Sardana talk with ‘change agents’ – the digital health leaders, patient champions, and innovative C-suite leaders – on how the industry is being constantly reshaped across virtual care, digital patient engagement, current challenges, and future impact of healthcare tech.
We’ve lined up SeamlessMD’s top 5 podcasts from 2022 to curate the digital strategies, priorities and approaches being implemented and optimized to address healthcare consumerism, digital patient engagement, and quality improvements. Listen to The Digital Patients on the go, WFH, AFK - as you like it on audio streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube.
1. Reimagining the alignment of healthcare workflows and digital innovation
Dive into the impact of tech adoption on clinical effectiveness and patient engagement with Dr. Denise Basow, Chief Digital Officer at Ochsner Health. With a 25-year career with industry leader Wolters Kluwer, including contributions as Editor-in-Chief of UpToDate, Dr. Basow outlines how healthcare can be reinvigorated by “reimagining of the workflow” with better-aligned technology that includes asynchronous processes and data and by drawing on the expertise of clinicians to build healthcare products.
Dr. Basow also explains her approach to digital transformation – focusing on a niche to operate in, experimenting with different tech and care models, and inserting the successes back into the system. This helps maintain agility in a system where large-scale disruption takes significant change management. And for Dr. Basow, value-based models are best suited to digital disruption. “We can improve quality with digital transformation. But that bending of the cost curve really only happens in a value-based world … if we really want to bend the cost curve, moving to value is critical.”
Other insights: A much-needed journey of transparency to rebuild the trust lost during COVID and the need for digital healthcare leaders to broaden the definition of what “telehealth” encompasses.
2. Rehumanizing patient experience through mission-oriented, rather than compliance-oriented, tech, and healthcare
Technology is evolving to play an important role in re-humanizing the patient experience post-COVID, and Dr. David Putrino, Director of Rehabilitation Innovation at The Mount Sinai Health System, author of Hacking Health: How to Make Money and Save Lives in the HealthTech World, and the ‘Global Australian of the Year’, tells us how. He proposes community co-design to support patient experience, which has a visible, measurable impact on improved patient adoption of digital health solutions like remote patient monitoring.
Finally, he advocates for health system leadership to be mission-oriented vs compliance-oriented. “The central piece to the integration of technology into healthcare is that anyone who is trying to use it to cut a corner or save a buck is going to ultimately fail because that's not what the users want. And anyone who uses it to increase the humanity of care delivery is going to win.”
Other insights: Successful adoption of new tech and innovation at large organizations depends on what resonates with different stakeholders, from clinicians to administration, and his passion for a new FDA-approved brain-interface technology.
3. Role of CMIO in bridging the gap between the clinical world and technology
As the former Associate Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Intermountain Healthcare and Associate Principal at Chartis, Dr. Michael Radtke strongly believes that strategy is the cornerstone for CMIOs today (and tomorrow), with an emphasis on organization strategy, population health management, and patient engagement. As the CMIO role evolves from optimizing technologies to recognizing the shifting healthcare landscape and shaping the future, Dr. Radtke opinionates on the essentials: listening to the “front line builders” of each department and asking the right questions when prioritizing technology integrations.
For instance, technology that allows providers to spend more time with their patients is what motivated Intermountain Healthcare to leverage AI-based voice technology to reduce physician burnout. “It's really about informatics being a part of that initial conversation. So that we can craft the best possible product and also adjust as needed … be a part of the iterative process.”
Other insights: Implementing digital coaches for patients, transparency on how a solution fits into provider workflow to build provider confidence in new technology, and the three emerging technologies Dr. Radtke is excited about: digital patient engagement, remote monitoring and patient-reported data, and omnichannel outreach.
4. How health tech vendors can build holistically useful tools by focusing on interoperability
Patient-facing innovation and interoperability focus for health tech vendors takes center stage in this conversation with Dr. Patrick A. Woodard, Chief Digital Officer at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare. A physician tech entrepreneur-turned-Chief Digital Officer, Dr. Woodard details his views on vendor relationships and why he pushes vendors to understand and integrate into current workflows, empower “internal sales teams” (hospital CIOs, CMIOs, etc.), and create holistically useful tools.
For Dr. Woodard, interoperability for a health tech vendor is an advantage for solutions that operate well and are embedded into current workflows (as change management is incredibly difficult). Dr. Woodard shares what he thinks the future of health systems looks like, including how EHRs in the future will be akin to data repositories leading to the challenge of configuring ways to parse useful information and the collective of patient-facing innovation as opposed to individual components. “Every health system is a little bit unique, but there's a lot of similarities to really all of them. So how do we bring all the parts together in a way that is integrative, and learn from the lessons that others have learned before us.”
Other insights: What healthcare leaders can learn from adopting the “growth mindset” of orchestras and XAI’s (Explainable Artificial Intelligence) capabilities in removing inherent bias in reporting.
5. The ever-expanding digital front doors in the health system
For Sara Vaezy, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy and Digital Officer at Providence and the chief architect of the Providence digital innovation model upon which the Digital Innovation Group (DIG) was founded, digital transformation and healthcare policy share the common element of change management. In this conversation, Vazey dives deep into the ever-expanding digital front doors for a health system, rejecting the notion of a single digital front door, and how that remains a driving factor behind the why’s and how’s of Providence ideating and incubating health tech startups to solve problems at scale.
This includes creating personalized omnichannel consumer experiences to remove friction and fragmentation, the need for collaboration in healthcare innovation to evolve policy at a larger scale, communicating and connecting DIG’s goals to the health system’s mission, and engaging clinicians during product development on a regular cadence.
Vazey explains why the team at Providence does not shy away from innovation despite facing regulatory challenges and believes that digital health transformation is in its infancy. “There are still digital disparities, so we need to keep pushing forward, but we need to do so while being mindful of underlying health equity issues that persist in our society. For instance, we are now working on full Spanish and other language translations on our digital property. So, continuing to push forward, but doing so with an eye on the considerations and learning along the way.”
Other insights: Unlocking personalized experiences and identity-driven engagement and the evolving nature of DIG to include multidisciplinary teams responsible for the entire consumer-patient continuum.
Listen to The Digital Patient Podcast to experience an edu-training approach to all things digital patient care. Be notified when new episodes are published. Subscribe to our blog to have insights delivered to your inbox once a month so you won’t miss an episode.
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