How IBM See the Emerging Trends Transforming the Healthcare Ecosystem
“The challenges are also the opportunities.” said Lenny Chen, MPH, Executive Consultant from IBM Global Center of Competence for Healthcare & Life Sciences.
Healthcare and medical field are undergoing a great evolution. In 2019 TRANS Conference, Lenny Chen shared his insights of this field.
Market Insights
The incumbents of the world are at an inflection point — they have an opportunity to be new disruptors or risk continuing with the status quo. Many companies are placing bets on expertise, data, and platforms. For example, 57% of organizations with a strategy to disrupt their market are owners of a platform business model. Companies nowadays have to keep asking questions as below. How will I adapt to rapidly changing customer preferences? How can I leverage the data I have to build meaningful, long-term relationships with my customers? Are my company’s talent practices still relevant? How can we develop our people to deliver greater value to customers?
IBM Global Health Agenda 2019
Lenny Chen introduced the outline of IBM Global Health Industry Agenda 2019, which gave the audience an insight of the trend. First of all, he mentioned the emerging disruptive forces. Powerful global forces, outside the control of any one organization, that are compelling rapid change across industries. Global forces disrupt the status quo, escalating sustainability crisis in healthcare field. The demographic tsunami, the rapid advancement of new technologies, the perfusion of data and the rise in consumerism contributed to the expansion of the forces and disrupt market.
Second, he discussed the consequences of the disruptive forces. Those global forces have profound effects on both the individuals and organizations level, such as the rising cost of healthcare, financial accountability and risk shifting resulting in erosion of safety nets.
Third, he addressed the pressing challenges and the following provocative opportunities. The managers that tackle the challenges are also the ones that seize the opportunities. When processes, professions, models and structures across healthcare are all in need of reinvention, the leaders should embrace automation, eliminate inefficiencies and reduce waste. Furthermore, insights and related actions replace big data and analytics data must deliver meaningful insights and elicit action to improve care, quality, outcomes and innovation, which further drives value. Also, people must be digitally empowered and intuitively engaged in their health. Consumer technologies influence all care and engagement strategies, companies must create unrelenting focus on experience, convenience and health outcomes.
In the following years, consumers are going to be the center of healthcare. A lot of partnerships and collaborations that moving beyond traditional care environment, ranging from pharmacies, clinics, food supply companies and so on.
The Bold New Entrants of Healthcare
“Health is an outcome of nature, nurture, families in communities and behaviors in a complex and interrelated system-of-systems.” said Lenny Chen.
There is no other system as complicated as healthcare network, with transportation, media, education, energy, housing, agriculture, governments and much more tightly connecting with each other. These offers the opportunities for new players to enter into healthcare. Amazon purchased Whole Foods to be able to tailor food shopping to the individual. CVS Health completed its acquisition of of Aetna Health, 3rd largest health insurer in the US. Apple launched its Electronic Health Record (EHR) app that gives access to health records on the iPhone. Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase announce a joint venture to cut U.S. healthcare cost with technology expected to be the initial focus. The unmet need mentioned before such as secure housing, access to nutrition, public safety, transportation access and more are the opportunities for those new players.
The Journey of IBM
Lastly, Lenny Chen shared IBM’s long journey. Throughout the past 100 years, IBM has re-platformed 4 times — powering the evolution of business and society. From system and hardware era, mainframe era, PC era, services to software and nowadays cognitive era. IBM have transformed from a hardware-centered to a solution-oriented company. Their new solution in Oncology is making an impact globally with over 300 hospitals and over 140,000 patients touched within only 2–3 years.
In sum, the incumbents of the world are at an inflection point. Under the evolution in medical and healthcare field, leaders have to choose between embracing or fleeing from the challenges and the opportunities hidden behind those obstacles. Now IBM is fighting the hurdles to adoption of AI and other technological and social challenges, hoping to claim lead in the healthcare and medical field.
Speaker Profile
Lenny Chen has spent the past 27 years in diversified areas in the healthcare industry. He brings a combination of artificial intelligence, strategy development, analytics, EMR/EHR, clinical operations, financial management, project management, and Health IT implementation expertise to healthcare institutions. As an Executive Consultant in IBM’s Global Center of Competence in Healthcare & Life Sciences, he advises clients in developing their Advanced Analytics/AI strategy. Prior to this, as the Senior Manager of IBM Watson Health’s Clinical Adoption Team, he provided leadership and oversight for Clinical Adoption projects for Watson Health’s Oncology and Genomics solutions in Asia Pacific and China.
Editor: Szu-Ying Chen
Reviser: Denny Chien, Ariel Cho
