The possibilities of technology and the obstacles for the industry

“Healthcare is a people-oriented business. Patients want to feel cared for, [to know] someone is listening, someone understands that I am in pain.”

– Kathy Azeez Narain, chief digital and innovation officer, Hoag Health System

Digital technology can support the mission of improving people’s lives, but it is not the end in itself.

“Patients want the best doctor, and that is a human being,” says Narain. “You can’t just digitize them and completely remove that human connection. People want that connection.”

This is article 13 in a 14-part weekly series, in which I share insights from the Healthcare in the Age of Personalization Summit 2024. We heard from a wide range of healthcare experts: leaders from all facets of healthcare organizations, from the boardroom and the C-suite to the patient’s bedside. We covered topics like why personalization is important, how we can shape our organizational cultures so people know they matter, what CEOs can learn about personalization from nurses, and more.

In this article, I share highlights from the panel discussion on boosting the patient experience in the digital age.

Panelists included:

• Kathy Azeez Narainchief digital and innovation officer, Hoag Health System
• Chase Idlemanvice president, market development and strategy, Zimmer Biomet

What do people actually want?

As Chief Digital and Innovation Officer for Hoag Health System, Narain spends time researching what people actually want when they hear the words “digital experience.” What do they actually want that experience to look like?

“Digital technology cannot take center stage,” says Narain. “What it can do is play a minor role in how easy it is for that person to reach who they need or get in touch with a doctor. But healthcare is a human issue. It is not a trading company. It’s not shoes, it’s not an iPhone. Healthcare will continue to operate in a very unique space.”

For starters: “The technology decisions [a health system is making] are not only due to the system. You have payers… you have regulatory environments… there are physician needs, patient needs, [all of which] drive the experience. That makes healthcare complex.”

That said, there are certain basics that people want: the efficiency they experience when buying things like shoes or iPhones.

“All the administrative things that we have people do in healthcare – those have been improved in many, many other sectors… by investing in making smooth journeys around doing fundamental things, fundamental things that we don’t often think about, but they actually putting up barriers for people to do something.”

She mentioned those dreaded phone calls again, as discussed in a previous article.

“If I have to call to make an appointment, I’ll probably never get the appointment, I’ll never find the time to call,” Narain said. “But my ability to do that digitally makes it something that I can actually plan for and get care for something that I’m putting off. I just didn’t feel like answering the phone.”

She said there is still so much room to make healthcare more personalized. While technology can help with personalization, it is also one of the barriers.

“There are micro-moments of personalization, but from a consumer lens we haven’t touched or even scratched the surface of what that could mean and/or look like,” Narain said. “And the systems themselves have invested so much in electronic medical record (EMR) platforms that I see that as a barrier to how they can actually achieve personalization. I am not convinced that visiting my patient portal is personalized. That just tells me all the bad things that have happened to me. And I think there’s a lot of benefit to be had from some of the fundamentals, but there’s still a lot of space that we haven’t covered.

Technology in patient care

Chase Idleman is vice president of market development and strategy for Zimmer Biomet, one of the largest orthopedic implant companies in the world, known for knee and hip implants. He said they surveyed patients and people within the orthopedic musculoskeletal wellness space, asking: What is most important to you before, during or after getting a knee or hip implant?

The answer: people want to know if their recovery process is on track. So that’s a place where Zimmer Biomet has developed technology to help improve the process.

Idleman said this was a revelation: They have data, they can do remote monitoring, but how can they make it actionable so it’s useful for the patient and for the care team?

“When someone goes through a typical orthopedic experience, he or she is given some paper with preoperative information and how to recover,” says Idleman. “We took that and created a digital experience called mymobility. It is our tool for patient engagement.”

This tool provides patient education and things like self-guided video exercises and updated monitoring data to healthcare providers.

“A care team member can see that this patient has taken 432 steps in the last five days,” Idleman said. ‘He moves on average about two kilometers per hour. He has eliminated 50% of his exercises, 25% of his training.”

They also use artificial intelligence to see how a patient’s recovery compares to that of others in their cohort, comparing gaits and walking speed.

“We can start by looking at days 15 through 40 in that postoperative window and tell you with a high degree of confidence where the patient will end up on day 90,” Idleman said. “This way you can intervene early [and with more insight].”

One barrier: limited resources.

Idleman said there are often gaps in the digital capabilities available and what a given healthcare provider can manage in terms of its own resources needed to make that technology available to its patients.

“Not everyone has a care team member who can devote the time to this,” says Idleman. “The reimbursements are going down. So people are asked to do more with fewer resources. And they say, “Hey, I need to sign up for another patient monitoring tool?”

Another barrier: payers.

According to Idleman, payers are still trying to determine what they will cover in terms of this new technology.

Narain said they are experiencing the same uncertainty within health care systems.

“We all talk about it health in the word healthcarebut our system is designed to support you when you have a need or a sick moment – ​​and to make that word a reality health When you do something, to me there is no billable way to do something on that preventive spectrum,” Narain said. “So the cost always goes back to the person trying to participate in some of these products.”

According to Narain, there are significant benefits that digital technologies have brought to the patient experience in healthcare. Benefits like expanded access through technologies that allow people to connect in new ways, and the technologies that improve patient care, as Idleman described.

Her role as digital and innovation officer, in looking for ways to solve this challenge of using technology to create a better experience for people, often goes beyond the technology itself.

“The work of digital officers and transformation people in healthcare – our work is not based on technology,” says Narain. “I spend so little time looking at the technology and more of my time solving things like: How do you even bring the data together? I need payer data, I need electronic health record data, I need all this data for this person [digital health tracking app] before I can even whisper the word personalization as a possible possibility.”

Watch this short video to learn more from the panel.

Next time: Concluding the series with the most critical reinvention strategies for healthcare leadership.