Digitization of Healthcare
This article was written by Dave Kereiakes with help from Joelle Sostheim, members of Providence Ventures helping to invest in change.
I was recently asked what technological innovation within the healthcare industry I’m most excited about. Fortunately, and unfortunately, my answer was “everything.”
While most industries in the 21st century have enjoyed the fruits of efficiency with the adoption of new technology, healthcare’s laggardness to innovate has left it far behind from a competitive and technological standpoint. According to a not-so-recent report from McKinsey (again, it’s healthcare, so we can use three-year-old data), healthcare is one of the least digitally advanced industries, falling just behind Government in the ranking, but uniquely ahead of agriculture & hunting.
Potentially overlooked in this report was the finding that top tier industries had workforces that were “13 times more digitally engaged than the rest of the economy.” Pondering that specific point has helped me come to terms with why an industry this size, drowning in resources, and so critical to our well-being, has struggled so tremendously to keep up.
Heavy regulation and high-stakes operations, along with a naturally older workforce, are significant factors that have held innovation at bay — or at least have limited the healthcare workforce from adopting a “digitally engaged” disposition. The fact is that healthcare workers and systems face a strong disincentive — the more digitally engaged our workforce is, the higher the potential risk we incur HIPAA violations, reputational damage, and even loss of licensing or imprisonment. Additionally, workflows are already crowded with data entry, cumbersome tools, and wrought with habits of “this is how it’s always been done.” And when it comes to disruptive leadership, CIOs and CTOs are often hired from within the healthcare ecosystem due to the industry’s hesitation to deviate from the norm, so the tailwinds of disruption and dramatic shake-ups aren’t open positions.
Furthermore, what drives change? The masses. People have flocked to clever consumer-oriented innovations — the convenience of a car-on-demand, home delivery of any food option (remember when it used to be just pizza?), being able to professionalize photos and share them with friends and family. Consumers drive change and have the power to turn centuries of business practices in a matter of years. And yet, healthcare is quite possibly the only industry where consumers don’t exist. Healthcare has payers, providers, regulators, drug companies, device companies, physicians, nurses, administrators, labs…Am I missing anything? Oh yeah, and patients.
In the past five to 10 years, these factors have crystalized that to innovate healthcare, we need a new approach. Driving real change in healthcare requires an acute understanding of the inner workings of the industry. At the same time, external innovators are needed to delicately articulate the clear value of what new solutions offer and the manageable risk associated with altering decades-old workflows.
Although these barriers are headwinds to improvement, they create enormous opportunities for those willing to take on the risk naturally inherent with change. The Providence St. Joseph Health system has the good fortune to be led by a Chief Digital Officer from Amazon, a Chief Information Officer from Microsoft, and nearly a third of our C-Suite comes with experience from outside the healthcare industry. Based in Seattle, Providence’s Digital Innovation Group (which houses the Providence Ventures team) is in its fifth year of operations and has the experience and talent to navigate these challenges, with a visionary leadership team and +100 software developers, engineers, and data scientists.
What’s the playbook we are running? Treat the patient like a consumer that actually has a choice for care. Get rid of the noise and allow caregivers to get back to caring for their consumers. Give these consumers the tools to receive proactive care when they want it, how they want it, and at a quality level, they deserve. Empower the masses to drive the change in this industry, our communities, and this country are clamoring for.
It is our firm belief that those who are willing to take the risk technology poses and ultimately, hand the power over to the consumer, will be best positioned to thrive from the growing wave of digital advancements that are crashing into our industry. We’ve made 17 investments on this principle to date, with more to come.
