Digital Transformation in Healthcare – A Consumer-centric Perspective
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…an approach for 2020 and beyond!
Healthcare Consumers’ biggest pain point today has been the difficulty in navigating the fragmented ecosystem! This fragmented ecosystem is leading to impersonal communication & transactions and complicated & time-consuming affair. Due to the increasingly personalised and convenient experiences with other sectors, Consumers have high expectations when it comes to the services they’re receiving from the healthcare industry, according to a new global survey from Salesforce Research.
Current Consumer E-xperience of Care is Broken
An ideal digital healthcare platform model of the future will be Consumer focused with delivery efficiency, and convenience – powered by an app with end-to-end services. This platform will enable Consumers’ not just to cater to their illness but also support & manage preventive measures for Wellness.
Healthcare Services on a Platform
Consumers will be in charge of their own healthcare decisions, including decisions on which insurance plans to participate in, where to get Care, and what type of Care they should get. The Consumer is being defined in broader terms than just the patient but also their families that are becoming stakeholders in the health care journey. In response, Health care stakeholders must increasingly be ready to engage with Consumers throughout the entire journey.
At the heart of this digital platform is the Consumer empowerment and engagement. Healthcare consumers will benefit with seamless & real-time communications and tech-enabled access to care. The digital platform helps the Consumer stitch up their journey across the stakeholders, manage their data independent of the service-applications that generate it and permission-guided data sharing among stakeholders.
Digital Platform Stack
The platform will lead to greater efficiencies in the healthcare ecosystem, new opportunities for health stakeholders and drive better health for individuals and populations. It’s not just the technologies in and of themselves that are significant, it is the way that we could create and leverage platform to integrate them to do new and different things. This approach has great potential to improve health outcomes and support savings for stretched healthcare budgets. And for policymakers, there is still a huge opportunity to recognize consumer-centricity as an important model and make it a larger foundation of healthcare systems.
Perhaps the best way to grasp the potential of Consumer-centric health care is by a company that has already implemented similar platform-powered delivery model in Vietnam. Jio Health is a technology company that is able to serve Consumers from initial scheduling to diagnosis to recovery. Its end-to-end service starts with an app, where a Care Consumer can input their symptoms and order a consultation with a Doctor. Some of the salient features of Jio Health;
- Jio empowers Consumers in booking an appointment with a GP / Specialist, ensuring a bed in a ward, and even arranging the transportation to and from the facility.
- Jio provides all Consumer’s medical records in a digital format. And it ensures a standardised level of services for all of its customers.
- Jio applies AI/analytics to patients’ health record to engage in preventative healthcare that possibly will extend lives, while reducing treatment costs over the Consumer’s lifetime.
Some recent market developments and thoughts in a similar “digital platform” model are;
- Brunei announcing ‘one patient, one record’ healthcare system.
- Health networks of the future will be Consumer-centered and act as dynamic curators and guarantors of personalized health and well-being.
- Enabling people to manage their health and well-being – an approach to Self Care
- How new health care platforms will improve patient care.
- Amazon’s approach to health care – AmazonCare + AmazongPharmacy + ……. next is what?
As the 3rd decade in the 21st century approaches, we have a great opportunity to transform healthcare into a Consumer-centric one. It would be interesting to watch if it will be the healthcare companies that will chew technology or digital companies that will bite healthcare to win this race!
PS: This is an attempt of creative foresight for Consumerisation in healthcare. Any feedback / suggestions are welcome.
I am a Marketer-Analyst. I am passionate about bridging User-Product gaps for consumer-ized solutions. I do this by generating Insights, evangelizing eXperience, personalizing Content and improving Engagement.
