By: Jeff Cowart, MAH
Nick van Terheyden, a healthcare technology futurist, writing in a recent edition of Fast Company’s Co.Exist cites three transformation trends to watch:
- Technology that works for physicians instead of against them
- The consumerization of health care
- Fewer patients waiting in hospitals
All of these, in the way van Terheyden describes them, promise to have an impact on the way physicians work, and how the traditional hospital-based care systems create alignment and engagement opportunities.
In Trend 1 van Terheyden, a physician, talks about the drop-down and click dysfunction of most electronic medical record systems from the physician point of view. He says a future of “mobile virtual assistants, like Siri, but built with medical-specific speech recognition, language understanding and artificial intelligence could shoulder the burden of these usability frustrations for physicians.”
In Trend 2, he talks about the consumer movement of the self-quantified patient (think FitBit or FuelBand) armed with research, opinions and a plan for their personal well-being. These folks are actively engaged in communities of interest convened via the internet and social media. In the immediate future, hospitals and physicians should adapt their brands and the full range of social engagement tools to establish themselves as authoritative participants in the ongoing conversations of these consumers.
In Trend 3, as trends 1 and 2 and population health management driven by the Affordable Care Act come together, van Terheyden can imagine the most profitable hospitals in the future as being – empty. Wow, that’s a big idea. Hospitals could (and should) leverage their brand positions and be actively engaged as the future health hub for the community. That requires strong leadership and vision. And, again, the ability to embrace technology is a key.
What struck me about this future vision, regardless of its ultimate reality or its timeline, is the message it sends about the need for hospitals and healthcare systems to rethink their future together with physicians. These trends are working and impacting the market right now. Hospitals working on physician engagement and alignment strategies must embrace the change and help redefine what ease of practice life really means to our physician partners.