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
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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
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