The post-pandemic healthcare market is experiencing profound changes which include greater emphasis on increasing the resilience of healthcare systems and elevating the baseline health of the population. Also evident is a distinctive shift towards preventive, personalized, and participatory care supported by patient engagement technology with re-imagined models of care.  

Much of the disruption is being driven by technology and medical advancements facilitating a holistic approach—preventive and continuous care as opposed to treatment; omnichannel engagement as opposed to facility-based interactions; and personalized care as opposed to standardized protocols.  

At the same time, the US healthcare market is witnessing a flux with increased mergers and acquisitions and non-traditional players entering the market. Retail pharmacies such as Walgreens and CVS Pharmacy are making fast moves into healthcare with new models of primary care, just as Amazon’s acquisition of care provider Primary One is set to disrupt delivery, insurance, and pharmacy services.  

These trends—fanned by an imperative to reform healthcare delivery—are converging towards preventive and value-based approaches to healthcare, which are gaining currency across all stakeholders.  

DIGITAL ACCELERATING NEW HEALTH TRENDS  

Digital is playing a crucial role in accelerating reforms towards affordable care; new patient-centric models; improved health outcomes and lowering the total cost of care for members and customers. Significantly, consumers are driving digital innovations demanding convenience and choice with new models of delivery such as telehealth, embracing m-health applications and virtual care via remote monitoring. 

Healthcare reforms like The Affordable Act have triggered a shift amongst insurers to engage with consumers directly and digital channels like member portals presented opportunities to deliver new customer experiences (CX). Digital empowered providers and payors to drive CX and better health with deeper collaboration amongst specialists, equipment manufacturers, and support services. These imperatives are forcing healthcare to innovate at speed and scale to create best-in-class products that appeal to consumers.  

RAISE THE GAME WITH DIGITAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT  

Healthcare companies are at a crossroads struggling to focus on value-creation while designing superior digital products due to IT skill shortages and high attrition rates. Winning healthcare companies are beating this challenge by partnering with specialist digital product studios and healthcare IT consulting services to create products at speed. 

According to Gartner, the shortage of IT skills is the most significant barrier to emerging tech adoption, and attrition amongst IT employees is higher than in other professions—tech workers change jobs every 2.7 years while employees in other professions do so every 3.2 years.  

Lack of career development is the number one reason for attrition and IT employees usually do not find satisfactory career paths in non-IT companies as they may not have the technical breadth and depth.  

CRAFTING HEALTHCARE EXPERIENCES WITH DIGITAL PRODUCT STUDIO  

Digital product studios are a select breed of partners with a deep understanding of healthcare with a digital-native lens helping organizations identify, design, and build the right digital products. Teams comprising UI/UX designers, developers, project managers, and CTOs with scalable resources coalesce to build outstanding digital products.  

Specifically, the following benefits accrue when partnering with this category of partners to develop healthcare IT solutions.  

Digital-native lens for UI/UX: Deep understanding of the healthcare customer journey to design experiences with UX design principles, intuitive interfaces, seamless navigation, and personalized experiences for insurance claims and payment; physician consultation; support services; treatment, and prevention.  

Digital Assurance: Brings ownership to ensure digital transformation success with quality assurance across the chain in process, data, and CX. Stabilize healthcare user journey with unified digital experience testing, automation and AI-powered methodologies. 

Automation: Intelligent automation combining RPA and AI/ML to automate provider lifecycle management; patient engagement; claims adjudication; and risk adjustments for payors and providers.  

THE HEALTHCARE PLAY 

Health-tech companies and Payors should identify the right partners to deliver cutting-edge digital products by leveraging the following key concepts.  

Embrace a service-design approach: Develop a data-driven understanding of how payers use digital tools and widen the spectrum of services to meet new needs across the provider lifecycle. 

 Understand the power of new platforms: Deep partnerships with market leaders such as Pega, UiPath, and Microsoft wherein a platform approach uses data to create intelligent, highly personalized experiences that connect different services with a single touchpoint.  

Transform across the organization: From developing new Cloud-based platforms to operational processes, emerging market leaders must focus on flexibility, speed, and constant evolution to cut through existing internal systems that often reside in silos. 

Healthcare organizations should elevate the game from passive partners of healthcare IT services to active co-creators of value-driven healthcare.  

Source: https://newvision-software.com/blogs/healthcare-digital-product-development/

About the Author:

Kapil Godani

CEO, NewVision software