What Health Technology Trends can Improve Operational Efficiency?
Before the pandemic, digital transformation had been a slow burner with incremental evolutions. Now with a looming recession in 2023, and health systems across the world at breaking point, more gas on is thrown on the digital fire across all sectors. Digital evolution holds the key to answering the questions posed to digital leaders in healthcare.
All industries have been forced to take a look at themselves and their processes but few with the consequences facing healthcare. The transformation being enacted by medical professionals is an ongoing lesson to all others. For all of the tenable benefits of digital transformation; the biggest thing most people need in their work and life is time. Now is the time for the Healthcare industry to truly transform digitally.
Aging and outdated infrastructures and roundly condemned care efficiency sees broken processes not working smoothly for caregivers or patients. However, digital solutions are countering the long-held headaches.
Health Technology Trends for 2023
Leveraging the Power of AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is enabling on-demand care for outpatient services and funneling to those who truly need in-patient attention. Chatbots, while not a direct human replacement, are streamlining the process of serious illness determination and freeing up valuable time.
Optimizations of inpatient and outpatient systems are beginning to emerge helping to improve two of the least efficient processes in modern medicine. These are vastly improved by automated medication reminders, digital front doors for patients who can no longer safely sit in waiting rooms together for hours, and even personalized dosage recommendations. In the consumerist world, efficiency is key and AI is mobilized to automate every step in the buyer journey that can be. Adopting hyper automation allows healthcare to benefit more than most.
RPAs Making a Difference
Robotic Process Automation (RPAs) are augmenting and extending the care offered with unrivaled efficiency. Automating note-taking and data entry tasks is giving nursing and home-care staff far more time with patients allowing them to make more detailed assessments. Digital transformation, AI, and RPAs are cleaning up operational practices that are well past their expiry dates.
Virtual Healthcare and Digital Offices
Whoever heard of Zoom before the Pandemic? While it is not the only video conferencing tool available, it’s explosion into everyday use is symbolic of our distance-conquering intent. Out of necessity, doctor’s private and public, have had to find a way to provide care without in-person exposure to patients. Those with chronic illnesses or immune deficiencies demanded it due to COVID-19 concerns.
The shift to digital care has vastly decreased the time consumption for patients and doctors of in-person care. Remote care is a new platform making medical advice and information more accessible. Even for interoperability of APIs, EHR, and referral to other specializations; access and distance have shrunk with doctors having more efficient methods of communication between each other and patients.
How to Choose Healthcare Technology Solutions that Drive Digital Transformation
The advantages of a successful digital transformation are augmenting the nature of healthcare across the globe. However, there remains a slight gap between clinics, hospitals, and governments knowing there are benefits and finding the right provider to suit. It is Olive’s mandate to bridge that gap and unlock the optimization improvements so badly needed.
1) Lead with the organizational needs
The past year and the future look very different from the view of each health sector stakeholder. Struggles, needs, and attributes tend to be quite different and so your solutions should look different. The very first step in finding a solution is identifying problem or areas of need.
Sit with your department heads and figure out exactly where you are suffering with inefficiency and what the future looks like. Take into consideration:
– What the future landscape of medicine looks like?
– What areas cause the most delays?
– What information is a priority to learn?
– What information would unlock a higher standard of care?
– What are the different tiers of your practice or hospital experiencing?
– What is achievable and implementable?
2) Gather and rank requirements
Drawing up a list of features you need from the technology is one half of the first step, the other half is prioritizing. This needs to be clear so for you to find the software or technology that makes the biggest difference to your team. It is no use finding a technology that doesn’t solve the bigger issues.
– What is of utmost importance?
– What are the biggest challenges in dire need?
– What would be nice to have but not imperative?
– What ancillary services will be essential from your vendors?
3) Develop a long list of health technology vendors
Step 3 involves locating every option you can find to satisfy your needs. Keep your search relatively shallow for now as you want to generate as many prospects as possible before shortening. Having an open mind is key to this section as vendors might offer solutions in ways you haven’t thought of or experienced before.
Be careful with the use of market evaluation sites such as Capterra and G2 as they are pay to play. If the perfect vendor isn’t paying their site, they aren’t visible to you. This is worthy of pause as bias in the digi-tech supplier market is challenging. You need credible opinions not swayed by commission.
4) Determine the shortlist of health technology vendors
Shortening your list to the best 3-5 vendors is a crucial step. The process of deciding is made much simpler by ruthlessly trimming down your list specifically to those that match your requirements.
For both public and private sector medicine, budgets are a vital consideration. Setting a budget can certainly take place in steps 1 and 2 depending on how firm your CFO needs to be. Having it in Step 4 allows you to see options with extra benefits and solutions. The value – cost trade-off is difficult to grapple with in healthcare but ultimately what is feasible and valuable is the option to go for.
Further to your budget considerations, test your options rigorously taking into account:
– How well do they serve your priorities?
– How compatible with your current systems are they?
– Are they mobile, accessible and agile?
– Are they easy to use?
– Are they secure?
– What shortcomings can be overlooked?
5) Ask for a Demo
Armed with your shortlist, you can actively conduct deeper research and review of your options. Ask for references, speak to current users, read whatever is available online but most importantly, ask for a demo. Any vendor worth working with will happily oblige.
Bring a number of your stakeholders to do the demo. Their voices must be heard and represented. Drafting a list of questions you would like to ask ahead of time is often quite helpful also. It is important to know what you really need out of the demo.
– Did each vendor tailor the demo to your specific needs?
– Which was your favorite and why?
– Did any vendor call you after to ensure they satisfied your requirements?
– What unique or unexpected features were displayed?
– Was everything you were shown relevant?
– What happens next in their process?
– What is the after-sales service?
– Does it improve your operations?
By the end of the last demo, you will likely be feeling inclined towards one or two. At this stage, revisit your ranked priorities. Did everything actually get discussed or were there only shiny, distracting features presented?
Managing Your Healthcare Tech Stack
Running a medical practice or a hospital is incredibly challenging. Fortunately, it draws brilliant minds and incredible innovations. The next step in that evolution is likely to be a full embracement of digital transformation and every stakeholder in the health sector needs to make sure they are getting the biggest return on their investments (ROI) (ROI LINK).
Olive is committed to finding you a tech solution and managing your tech stack in the most effective, efficient way. We are shaving months off the procurement process for our clients reducing risks, time, and cost. Whether you require one solution or an entirely new refitted tech stack, we collaborate on your needs and priority requirements before finding solutions specific to your needs – to maximize your resources and caregiving.
Simply put, Olive cuts the BS of irrelevant sales pitches and over-promises by serving you, shortening the entire procurement and evaluation process dramatically.
Shape the Digital Future of Healthcare, with Olive
Digital transformation has permeated the profession at a faster rate than anyone had previously anticipated. The benefits of digitizing and automating are exactly the solutions needed by the medical field but navigating to find the right fit is laden with pitfalls. Risks and delays are costly but can be removed by using Olive.
We streamline the entire process to fit your exact demands. As we don’t charge vendors to feature on our site, you can trust our credibility. Any Olive provided solution is based entirely on expert opinions of what is right for you and your digital transformation.
