​Technology & Digital Transformation

As cloud technology has catalyzed the next generation of healthcare, it has also allowed for growth at a rate beyond imagination. Healthcare today is fast moving and its consumer expectations are an ever-increasing demand. These new consumers of healthcare are giving particular attention to the ease of services, choices and ratings, and pricing. Enabling these demands is, of course technology but fueling its river beds is the deep flow of data. Data is coming into the industry and data is flowing out into the mobile phones, desk tops and other resources tapped by the consumer. At the core, is innovation and the user experience is its elixir.  Driven by an entre- or intrapreneurial mindset, these consumer experiences will define new competitive advantages.

Let’s say that through the decades with all of its advancements, the healthcare industry could have been considered the last frontier for computer technology.  It was.  Paper charts were used by design and the ‘sharing’ of data was not a priority, in that way.  The perception from a business interest in those years was limited.

Industrial giants like Siemens, GE and others had partnered with hospitals to solve problems. The technology that was implemented was poignant, siloed and effective at solving the problem and gaining market share.  Competition was minimized and barriers to entry remained high.  If one were to pin point the shift into where we are today, it could be feasible stated it began when Judith Faulkner and her relatively new management from EPIC systems collaborated with and the California-based Kaiser Permanente in the 1980’s to create a ‘user-friendly’ software system.  Fast forward a few decades to 2009, the U.S. Federal Government’s aggressively moved to push electronic health records software systems into the public domain.  The initial public-private collaboration began in New York City in 2007.   The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene partnered with eClinical Works, a software systems company based in Massachusetts. The partnership offered primary care physician practices the software for free for a period of time (four years) funded by the NYC Health Department.  The results were highly effective.  It was originally intended to monitor urban health crises outbreaks and control when an epidemic event is identified, then with data, isolate the disease site and treat that community, inside an urban zone.  It was so effective that the concept launched nationally in 2009 with what later became known as HITECH.