How Can Healthcare Digital Transformation Deliver World Class Patient Experience – Exclusive Insights from Radixweb’s COO

Summary: Health IT isn’t a new concept. But healthcare digital transformation is targeting two deals – optimizing operational costs and delivering superior patient experience. How? The COO of Radixweb, Dharmesh Acharya explains.

Disruption has always been a part and parcel of healthcare. Traditionally, the standard of care has been defined by discoveries in drug and surgical inventions. The global pandemic brought in a seismic shift in the healthcare industry, and that’s when the players realized their need for digital penetration.

As they gradually explored the ‘connected future’, they realized that healthcare IT had the potential to automate manual tasks, manage and access data more securely and most importantly, reduce operational costs, which right now sits as a huge burden on the industry.

Do you know that Salesforce recently reported that operational costs amount to almost one-quarter of the $4 trillion spent by the healthcare industry annually in the US?

Also, more and more healthcare organizations are becoming aware that the demand of their customers are evolving with every passing day. With patients growing more tech-savvy, they expect their digital experience to be constant across all areas of their lives – even in healthcare.

So, why is Digital Transformation necessary in healthcare now?

Hua Ye, the Chief Product Officer at Lightship sums it up well – “Patients, as consumers, expect healthcare to work just like everything else in their personal and professional lives. In recent years, health systems have delighted patients with consumer-friendly mobile apps and telehealth offerings, but patients are still frustrated when they experience discharge delays or have to schedule surgery far in the future. Leading organizations are now focused on digitally transforming their care operations, and efficiency is becoming a new strategic advantage.”

I have spoken to dozens of business leaders from the healthcare industry and collated a list that all of these healthcare businesses aim to achieve with digital transformation.

What Can You Aim to Achieve with Digital Health? 

Using healthcare digital transformation, you can support building a sustainable healthcare ecosystem and enable safe, easy-to-access and effective healthcare services. Right from enabling well-informed decision-making to fostering superior coordination of care for patients with complex diseases; minimizing hospital visits and admits to eliminating the adverse effects of wrongly prescribed drugs and most importantly, eliminating the duplication of tests – by storing all relevant data in a cloud-enabled single unified gateway.

Your patients are your customers. And digital transformation can help you design better customer journeys by taking you to the edge of responsiveness.

Let me now highlight the benefits your business can entail from Digital Transformation in Healthcare.

Unlock the True Potential of Your Health Business Through Digital Innovation

The focus of the healthcare industry has majorly been on improved health results, operational structures and diagnostics. However, as the industry recorded the paradigmatic change in their customers’ opinions, security, interests and expectations, they slowly moved their commitment to fostering a better patient care experience. 

Tackle inefficiency in services: Digital transformation in healthcare aims to provide more reliable services to its patients. With the automation of tedious manual tasks and easily accessible data, physicians and healthcare professionals will have access to accurate information without the hassle of handling paperwork.

Improved coordination: The healthcare industry demands access to information at the fastest pace. Silos in communication between professionals and the absence of key stakeholders often create loopholes in timely diagnosis. With automated digital protocols, accurate data can be made available to the authorized members of the team, promoting rapid communication and collaboration between healthcare service providers. 

Real-time update of records: At the base of digital healthcare is the use of optimized patient monitoring systems. Healthcare professionals and patients lose a lot of critical information between appointments. However, with digital wearables, now physicians can be regularly updated about critical patient metrics, form accurate diagnosis and even make timely interventions – thanks to real-time vital updates.

Accessibility of health records: The adoption of EHRs isn’t new in healthcare. But due to the sudden boom in health IT, many healthcare systems witnessed poor responses or even prolonged system downtimes. With the new wave of digital transformation, the hybrid cloud environment enables the integration of existing data with the cloud servers for on-demand access to health records.

Optimization of digital health platforms: Accumulation of healthcare data and regular vitals was one disconnected task that hindered many real-time diagnostic decisions for years. However, digital transformation enables EHR tracking, medication records and daily monitoring to one unified gateway. Not only does this help the professionals manage their time better and assure high-quality care, but also helps design better patient experience journeys.

I have also identified a few digital health trends that will take the industry by storm:  

Reimagine Care for Patients with Digital Innovation – A COO’s Approach

Understand this, when I talk about reimaging care, you need to transition from the eye view of your patients. Putting your patients at the center, navigating specialty care journeys and supporting the patients as a whole, requires creating a seamless digital ecosystem first to bring the required solution unity.

Your ultimate goal as a healthcare provider is to design connected patient journeys. And there are literally two keys to do that – building trust by staying engaged, and offering a personalized approach by customizing lifestyle, digital and biological interventions.

My Tips for Navigating Your Transition to the Digital

Traditional healthcare systems mostly stay away from digitally transforming their healthcare due to few or all of the reasons – the cost of adopting transformation, time required to establish new processes, dearth of software integrations, data regulations and privacy policies and mostly, the fear of moving forward.

However, moving from legacy to advanced systems isn’t an option anymore, it’s a priority. And all concerns relating to digital transformation can be managed with the help of a healthcare software development company. So, don’t let fear hold you back, because your consumers might just flock away for the want of a better patient experience.