Time for Healthcare to Look Out the Windshield Instead of at the Dashboard

The Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development (SHSMD) recently released the second edition of Bridging Worlds: The Future Role of the Healthcare Strategist. This update to the original 2014 report outlines five key imperatives that SHSMD believes are needed for healthcare success:

  1. Be nimble to exceed the rate of change
  2. Create consumer experiences, tell powerful stories
  3. Integrate and co-create
  4. Erase Boundaries of Business
  5. Generate Data-Driven Insights

“One of the biggest changes from the 2014 edition and one of the biggest opportunities that has come to the forefront is consumerism” says Holly Sullivan, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Spectrum Health and Vice Chair of SHSMD’s Bridging Worlds Committee, “It’s up to us as Strategists and Marketers to embrace this new reality and help our organizations adapt to this new level of expectation from patients. It’s definitely something that’s right in front of the windshield.”

Investing in technologies that improve and transform the patient experience will be key to meeting these heightened expectations including telemedicine, wearables, remote patient monitoring and artificial intelligence. However, technology alone will not lead to success, healthcare organizations will also need to break down their walls and collaborate in a more frictionless manner.

According to Sullivan: “Culture is the biggest challenge here. Historically healthcare organizations don’t like to share the sandbox and have believed they can do it all, own it all. We need to help our organizations lift their heads and see what’s coming at us down the road. We need to educate people that partnerships are an imperative.”

This need for collaboration and partnership is captured in the “Erase Boundaries of Business” section of the Bridging Worlds report. That portion of the report also encourages Strategists to think well beyond the walls of their organizations.

“We have to stop thinking of healthcare as a place where you go when you are sick,” adds Donna Teach, Chief Marketing and Communication Officer at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Chair of SHSMD’s Bridging Worlds Committee. “Care is now anywhere the patient is and we need to engage patients through their entire healthcare journey rather than just points in time. Patients want to use new technologies like telemedicine and remote monitoring because it’s easy, convenient and fits nicely into their daily lives.”

Embracing HealthIT technologies permeates Bridging Worlds and Big Data in particular seems to hold the most potential in the eyes of the report authors: “Most importantly, data is only useful if it generates insights that enable better decision making. New tools, including predictive models and artificial intelligence, allow regular users to connect and visualize large volumes of data from multiple sources in ways that generate actionable insights.”

“EMRs + Big Data is just the tip of the iceberg”, echoes Teach. “It’s a technology will fundamentally change healthcare.”

Bridging Worlds is a useful guide. It clearly outlines the skills that Healthcare Strategists and Marketers will need to master in order to help their organizations transition from old models of care. Sprinkled throughout the report are useful instructions and examples of how to practice the skills and knowledge being outlined.

The key takeaway from report? “Marketing Strategists can be the agent of change no matter what level they are.” says Sullivan, “That’s the one key idea that I hope people will take from reading Bridging Worlds.”

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

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