Industry Perspectives

The healthcare industry is continuously challenged by the pressure of providing patient care and treatments while balancing the cost of operations. The challenge in healthcare is the availability in providing patient services in hospital networks with acceptable rate structures to insurance companies. While the resilience of healthcare is dependent on doctors and nurses, the confidence and expectations of more knowledgeable patients has elevated the need to provide better experiences.

For healthcare organizations, a steady focus on digital innovation that moves beyond transformation to digital modernization is necessary to meet industry requirements. Ventana Research has identified three key business trends every healthcare organization should address to achieve excellence in business processes.

Top of mind is healthcare sustainability and how the consumption of energy, food and raw materials while caring for patients impacts the environment. Healthcare institutions such as hospitals and office locations require a lot of energy to function. State-of-the-art technology and medicines use significant resources, which generates a larger carbon footprint. Examining supply chain options for materials and products through information and analytics can identify ways to minimize the waste produced and energy consumed.

The continuous evolution of the digital healthcare market enables the use of information and communication technologies to manage illnesses and health risks through digital therapeutics such as wearables, and contact via mobile and tele-health. Promoting wellness is more achievable when healthcare organizations target consumers based on behavior and intent during their medical discovery process. Reassessing how digital technology enables the access and delivery of healthcare can streamline the utilization of digital self-care opportunities.

Social determinants of health such as where people are born, live, work and age combined with socioeconomic status, education, neighborhood, employment and social networks are used to understand correlations and demand on the healthcare market. Gaining insights into the conditions and causes can help address the systemic issues related to healthcare outcomes by shining a light on ways to encourage social change or by adopting government or private sector programs. Preventative healthcare and the location and availability of medical services can improve the life expectancy of at-risk segments of society. These decisions can be guided by insights from analytics.

The healthcare industry is working through significant post-pandemic duress and the continuous digital transformation that has not necessarily provided the modernization of medical processes and technology in a way that meets patient expectations. The interconnected aspect of efficient interactions with doctors, nurses and patients and how the healthcare industry operates must be considered together for a more connected and unified approach. The requirement for every healthcare organization is to use the data from inside and externally to ascertain the combination with technology that is governed to meet the ultimate purpose of healthcare. Through 2024, over two-thirds of healthcare organizations will deem the lack of common governance and manageability of deployed digital technologies an operational risk.

Healthcare organizations should assess patient and treatment process efficiency and organizational readiness to meet the pressures of the patient, insurance and treatment to outcome trends. How organizations adapt and develop a responding sense of urgency will determine effectiveness as measured by utilization of healthcare locations. Ventana Research recommends that healthcare organizations adapt and transform to be digitally effective in their patient processes and hospital and office location operations that best meet the community needs. The risk in not being sustainable, resilient and ready can have life or death consequences when expected healthcare delivery is not achieved.