Key success factors for accelerating Digital 2.0

July 27, 2021 | By Suja Chandrasekaran, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Digital & Information Officer, CommonSpirit Health

Digital 2.0 is a way of structuring the next generation of capabilities that will enable care providers to engage with patients and clinicians. Digital 2.0 will see an amplification of all components in the digital health care framework (Digital Patient Experience, Care Provider Experience, Digital Therapeutics Experience, and Virtual Health Experience). [This framework was discussed in this previous edition of the Digital Edge.]

As care providers continue to innovate, success in Digital 2.0 will be driven by seven key factors:

Key factors for success in Digital 2.0

Obsessive human centricity

Keep the patient as the focus of everything especially with design and UX decisions. As customers find wider access to options at increased convenience, it will be imperative to develop capabilities along the patient’s journey. The aim is to provide a superior customer and provider experience to drive increased engagement and quality of care.

Apply customer information in enriching the experience

Customer data is a foundational element across all four components of the digital health care framework. A critical activity will be to capture and dispense customer and care information across touch-points in the patient journey. It will also allow the creation of new data products that leverage analytics and AI to drive enhanced care standards and customer engagement. Cognizance of customer privacy protection and regulatory compliance in all aspects of data collection and processing is a critical consideration.

Design for scale and flexibility

We live in an era of consumer internet where millions of users engage online. Lately, the digital experience of all consumers has scaled massively, and health care is no different. Digital health care capabilities must be designed keeping this massive scale in mind, but they should also be inherently flexible so they are agile in adapting to evolving consumer needs.

Personalization

Consolidated customer data combined with data analytics will enable delivery of personalized patient experiences. Longitudinal customer data that is collected over time from a combination of traditional sources and modern, near-synchronous technology such as wearables can be leveraged to build powerful digital therapeutics capabilities.

Enable self-service

The success of virtual health care and digital therapeutics is predicated on allowing for a greater opportunity in user self-service. It would be crucial to make relevant data and information available to the patient. As users gain access to this information, they will find it more meaningful and easier to engage with care providers and manage their own health.

Establish a digital mindset

People are fundamental to any transformation. Everyone will need to develop an awareness of the journey and actively participate in it. This is crucial for care provider experience as expert inputs and feedback will improve the capabilities and make them more useful. The emphasis needs to shift from simply adopting digital tools to being change agents who are willing to shape disruption.

Commitment to interoperability

Regulation around health care data should continue to evolve to create an environment that allows greater data sharing. Technology players that aggregate data and facilitate interoperability will be at the forefront of disruption. This would allow for the emergence of integrated delivery models that are based on partnerships across several care providers. These models, in turn, will promote the rapid development and deployment of digital and analytic solutions.

Digital 2.0 will develop iteratively over time with a combination of people and technology capabilities. Customer centricity will drive innovation in patient and care provider experience to offer connected journeys, while also ensuring security and privacy of patient information. Data will be collected continuously and integrated across platforms. The regulatory environment will foster a need for greater data interoperability. Care providers will need to expedite their speed of delivery and curtail their implementation and support costs. It is imperative for the care providers to excel at these seven key factors in order to derive the desired patient, clinical and business outcomes from Digital 2.0. Follow for more digital edge articles at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digitalechedge/?viewAsMember=true