The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 4 (Aug 2014) | Page 22

Achieving Digital Success in Healthcare Achieving Digital Success in Healthcare By Dr Alexander Graham Dr Alex Graham is a medical doctor by background, having trained in London before entering the business world. He is currently a founding partner at AbedGraham, a research and strategy consultancy which assists global IT corporates to navigate the clinical, organisational and commercial complexities of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). He is also medical director of EMEA for Imprivata. Adoption and diffusion of technology requires negotiation of many hurdles especially in the healthcare setting. Satisfying all the stakeholders that your product or service will affect is a tremendously difficult process, highlighted by the fact that inventions take on average 17 years to reach widespread diffusion in healthcare. The key to success stories in healthcare revolve around what I feel is the holy triad of clinical, organisational and financial metrics. If one of these is not satisfied, it gives an organisation (or at least one of the board) the chance to reject the technology out of hand. If you can create something that can show a demonstrable impact on patient care, improve the working lives of the employees that will be using it and save money (preferably in cash-releasing benefits) then it will be very difficult to discard as a concept. The final stage is then of course ensuring that when deployment happens, that the maximum value is generated out of it, which is where front-line clinical engagement is the key. In my personal experience, too many companies focus on a specific section of an ROI study and neglect one or more of the important factors just mentioned. Often the technical elements are oversold while the financial and clinical elements are neglected somewhat. Of course, this is perfectly understandable as those are the strong points historically of IT organisations. However, a more holistic approach is required to achieve maximal adoption and diffusion within a system. One of the more successful companies I have worked with recently has been Imprivata, leader in single sign-on and authentication software products. They have taken a product that is a fairly simple IT proposition but worked it into a comprehensive piece of clinical technology that satisfies all stakeholders concerned. The base product is single sign on which allows a dramatic reduction in the time spent logging in and out of clinical software programs. The idea is that it gives clinicians up to 45 extra minutes a day through streamlining alone. A simple piece of technology but one that has far reaching consequences for the efficiency of an organisation. A lot of my work centres on taking well-defined and simple technologies and moulding them around the commercial metrics that exist in healthcare. The key is to dig down and analyse where your product fits in amongst the myriad financial metrics and initiatives that exist in clinical systems and start building a robust business case around them. By taking hospital and trustspecific measures and national quality and clinical metrics 20 August 2014 into consideration, technologies can develop from simple software propositions to all-encompassing healthcare solutions, which will have answers to any question a board member may ask, whether clinical, organisational or financial. Other examples that I have been watching closely are the vendors of digital dictation products such as WinScribe, G2Speech and BigHand. This is especially noticeable in the UK where I see digital dictation as one of the foremost front-line technologies to kick-start a paper-lite or paperless NHS. The basic software surrounding digital dictation is again a simple premise, but can be appropriated to numerous clinical, financial and organisational benefits. Also, at a higher level, digital dictation will often be the first transformational step for healthcare organisations who can then progress to speech recognition and higher level data analytics, driving further organisational benefits. In the world of digital and mobile, there is much said about revolutionary new technologies like 3D printers, complex genomics and robotics. In my opinion, those will have some part to play in the future but at the moment, financially strained and time-poor healthcare organisations require sensible, proven infrastructure solutions that can reap tangible benefits across the institution. They’re not ‘sexy’ and it may not reach the wider media but solutions like these are the immediate future of digital and mobile in healthcare. I believe success can be derived from a granular knowledge of all the stakeholders, their individual pain points and a deep understanding of the clinical and financial atmospheres they exist in. If you can frame your product or service in terms of each of their requirements and validate it on multiple levels, then you are well set on the way to success in the healthcare market. n Have a project you want us to cover? Let us know the details of any projects that you would like us to cover in upcoming editions of The Journal. Send the details to [email protected] The Journal of mHealth The Global Voice of mHealth