Healthcare is one of the world’s most vital sectors. From frontline patient management and nursing to pharmaceuticals—every facet of healthcare needs to be efficient and forward-thinking and digital has had an impact on the way the industry operates and communicates.
The stakes are high in the healthcare industry as people are reliant on its success and regardless of which branch you work in, it’s vital to be adaptable and innovative in an ever-changing landscape.
To optimize their processes, services, and innovations, droves of leading businesses across sectors are investing in digital transformation, and medical providers are no exception.
Here we explore digital transformation and show why embracing the power of digital technologies and processes is so important in today’s hyper-connected age.
Importance of digital transformation in healthcare matter
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the wheels of digital transformation were in motion—but turning slowly. Many medical institutions and pharmaceutical brands were lagging behind in the digital stakes, operating with outdated tools and processes.
The medical health mobile apps market exceeds $13.4 billion in the US alone and is predicted to keep growing into 2030. This value is a testament to the rising role of digital transformation in healthcare.
Digital transformation is integral to the ongoing success of the healthcare industry. It can also help enhance customer experience, adhere to regulations and be ethically transparent. By digitizing key organizational functions and processes, you can:
- Optimize workflows and minimize administrative duties, improving efficiency while gaining the freedom to place your resources into initiatives that drive your organization or institution forward.
- Significantly improve patient care by gaining a panoramic view of essential data and insights that improve decision-making while facilitating personalization.
- Identify and prevent potential medical catastrophes from occurring, driving down unnecessary deaths and illnesses in the process.
- Improve financial efficiency by streaming operations across departments and eliminating unnecessary processes.
- Enhance medical product development and gain a deeper understanding of medical consumers to improve your healthcare sales and marketing initiatives (building trust and loyalty in the process).
In such a critical industry, brands and providers alike must embrace digital transformation to evolve. Migrating towards a digital future is essential, yet 60 percent of medical organizations feel that they’re only halfway through their digital transformation process.
The rise of digital transformation in healthcare
The spread of COVID-19 has catalyzed digital transformation across every branch of pharma and healthcare, forcing medical institutions, brands, and providers to reimagine the way they operate.
In the UK, for example, the NHS invested in a digital overhaul of its public maternity services. This innovative leap towards digital transformation has significantly reduced the need for paperwork, saving the trust around 40 hours of staff administration time every year.
This new tech-centric initiative also gives maternity staff access to detailed patient analytics from a central digital dashboard while significantly improving the patient journey.
With access to user-friendly apps and online tools, maternity patients can now access vital information instantly while gaining secure access to their medical records.
According to Deloitte, 92 percent of medical professionals and healthcare providers believe achieving a better patient experience is the top desired outcome for their digital transformation efforts while patient experience and engagement is the top area for investment for 88 percent of survey respondents.
In the pharmaceutical industry, brands are using autonomous technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to gain a greater understanding of their audience.
With access to smart tools and analytics, pharma brands are improving their product development processes while delivering personalized content that establishes authority and creates stronger consumer connections.
Essential healthcare digital transformation trends
Digital transformation is changing the face of healthcare. From direct patient care to pharmaceutical sales and marketing, Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) across the industry are reaping the rewards of embracing a digital future. Here are some of the key trends that are driving positive change within the sector.
1. The rise of ‘on-demand’ healthcare or telehealth
Telehealth is the most attractive healthcare IT investment segment for healthcare providers in the next 12 to 24 months. In the digital age, patients or consumers can access information from anywhere in the world and at any time.
By adapting to the needs of today’s digital natives and their increasingly demanding schedules, HCPs and medical brands are beginning to enhance the user journey with on-demand healthcare services.
According to a Digital Transformation in Healthcare in 2022 study, today’s medical consumers frequently go online to seek information such as:
- Researching doctors (47%)
- Looking at hospital and medical facilities (38%)
- Booking medical appointments (77%)
As digital transformation within healthcare continues to evolve, more HCPs will develop platforms, apps, and content hubs to provide access to personalized information, informative news or medical guides, and booking facilities that empower consumers to take charge of their healthcare needs in a way that suits their needs.
2. Big data and predictive analytics
To gain a deep-dive view of patient data and various organizational functions, an increasing number of HCPs are beginning to invest in big data analytics and data mining.
In addition to reducing human error and gaining a wealth of insights that can drive efficiency while providing a better patient or consumer experience across touchpoints, big data and analytics can uncover preventative trends or patterns.
Armed with cohesive visual data, medical providers and pharma brands can develop initiatives or strategies that can guide patients towards a safer, healthier future while preventing any budget-sapping events or issues before they unfold.
With access to patient and consumer data it’s also possible to provide an experience tailored to individual needs or pain points—which, in turn, cements trust, increases engagement, and inspires brand advocacy.
3. The continued popularity of wearables
As we mentioned earlier, the medical wearables market is thriving. With more people investing in wearables to monitor their health stats than ever before, HCPs and pharma brands alike have a key opportunity to tap into a highly-engaged market.
By providing patients or medical consumers with wearables such as heart rate monitors, sweatomitors or exercise trackers, you can gain a wealth of insight into your audience while gaining a direct line of communication.
Conversely, medical brands can also tap into existing wearable markets and partner up with reputable brands (Garmin, FitBit, etc.) to deliver highly-targeted content to key audience segments.
Tapping into wearables means being able to incentivize consumers to engage with your brand while providing gamification opportunities and sharing valuable content that will showcase the value of your products or services.
FitBit’s Health Solutions Partnership Program, for instance, has proved successful with countless medical brands or organizations teaming up with the supplier to offer their consumers or patients wearables to monitor statistics and benefit from reward and recognition initiatives. A trend that is likely to continue in the coming years.
4. Internet of Things
Before the introduction of the Internet of Things, patient and doctor interactions were only restricted to physical visits and text communications. Doctors or hospitals had no way to track the patient’s health continuously and take action accordingly.
IoT-enabled devices facilitate remote monitoring in the healthcare industry, unlocking the potential to keep patients healthy and safe and allowing physicians to provide better care.
Since IoT has made interactions with doctors efficient and easier, it has improved patient satisfaction and engagement.
IoT is changing the healthcare industry by remodeling people’s interaction in providing healthcare solutions. Implementation of IoT in healthcare benefits physicians, hospitals, patients and insurance companies.
IoT for physicians
With home monitoring equipment embedded with IoT sensors and wearable devices, physicians can monitor patients’ health in real-time. IoT allows healthcare professionals to become more watchful and interact with patients proactively.
Data gathered from IoT devices can help doctors find out the best treatment process for patients and get the expected outcomes.
IoT for patients
Devices such as fitness bands and wirelessly connected heart rate monitoring cuffs provide patients access to personalized attention. IoT devices are used to remind doctor appointments, calorie count, number of steps taken in a day, blood pressure, heart rate and much more.
IoT enables real-time remote monitoring and is beneficial for elderly patients. It uses an alert mechanism and sends a notification to concerned healthcare providers and family members.
IoT for hospitals and clinics
Apart from tracking patients’ health, IoT devices can be used in many other areas in hospitals. IoT devices embedded with sensors are used for monitoring the real-time location of medical equipment, including nebulizers, wheelchairs, oxygen pumps and other equipment.
Hospitals also have to deal with the spread of infection that is the primary concern for them. IoT-based hygiene monitoring devices assist in preventing patients from getting the infection.
For example, smart IoT-enabled cameras can detect if patients are washing or sanitizing their hands before taking a meal or medication or visitors are not sitting close to the patient.
5. Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality is a technology that uses the computer-generated simulation of a 3-D image or environment that allows a person to hear, see and interact using special equipment, for example, headsets.
The technology creates a simulated environment where users can immerse in. Unlike traditional user interfaces, VR takes users inside a virtual experience instead of only displaying a screen.
The Healthcare industry is adopting virtual reality to deliver better care to patients.
For example, one of the patients was getting chemotherapy every week for around 6 years to treat colon cancer. She used to spend her 4.5 hours during the chemo session reading books, chatting or watching TV.
During infusion, she sometimes wanted to go to beaches to relax. Unfortunately, she was unable to go in real life as her skin was too sensitive to go out in the sunlight.
But Virtual Reality made her dream come true by simulating a beach-like environment where she could feel like she was sitting on the beach and enjoying the sunbath.
She is not only the one who is fond of using virtual reality in a healthcare setting, but many patients love this experience when getting treated.
From the clinic to medical rooms, the virtual reality is exploding and expected to continue to grow in the coming years. According to the research by GlobeNewsWire, the market for Virtual Reality in Healthcare will reach $7 billion by 2026.
Healthcare is still in its early stages of the technology; therefore, the healthcare industry has started to realize where it can be used and challenges posed by the VR.
6. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence simplifies the lives of doctors, patients and hospital admins by doing tasks that are usually done by humans at a fraction of cost and in less time.
From finding links between genetic codes to driving surgery-assisting robots, surveying chronic diseases and conducting the risk assessment, AI is reinventing and revitalizing modern healthcare through machines that can comprehend, predict, learn and act.
AI provides a number of advantages over clinical decision-making and traditional analytics. Learning algorithms can become more accurate and precise when they interact with training data.
It allows humans to gain unprecedented insights into care processes, treatment variability, patient outcomes and diagnostics.
Here are some of the ways AI is poised to bring digital transformation in healthcare
Diagnosing and reducing errors
Medical error and misdiagnosing illness led resulted in 10% of all deaths in the US. AI is one of the most exciting technologies that promise to improve diagnostic processes.
Large caseloads and incomplete medical histories can result in deadly human errors. However, AI can help predict and diagnose diseases fastly than any medical professionals.
For example, in one of the studies, an AI model used algorithms and deep learning to diagnose breast cancer at a higher rate than 11 pathologists.
Breast cancer is found to be the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the US and screening mammography has been observed to reduce mortality.
Computer-assisted detection and diagnosis (CAD) software have been built in the 1990s to help radiologists enhance the predictive analytics of screening mammography. Unluckily, data suggested that early CAD systems had not led to an improvement in performance.
However, the remarkable success of deep learning in visual object detection and recognition, deep learning tools assisted radiologists in improving the accuracy of screening mammography.
Analytics for Pathology Images
Pathologists provide one of the essential sources of diagnostic data for providers across the spectrum of care delivery.According to Jeffrey Golden, MD, Chair of the Department of Pathology and a Professor of Pathology at HMS, “Seventy percent of all decisions in healthcare are based on a pathology result.
Somewhere between 70 and 75 percent of all the data in an EHR are from a pathology result. So the more accurate we get, and the sooner we get to the right diagnosis, the better we’re going to be.
That’s what digital pathology and AI has the opportunity to deliver.”One of the digital pathology platforms, Proscia, uses AI to identify patterns in cancer cells.
It helps pathologists remove bottlenecks from data management and leverage AI-enabled image analysis to link data points that support cancer diagnosis and treatment.
