Continued Disruption and Healthcare Innovation: Three Takeaways from the CHIME Spring Forum

It’s no secret that technology transformation in healthcare is both needed and happening. The COVID-19 pandemic  accelerated the transformation of healthcare delivery, how provider organizations do business, and how patients access and participate in care.

 As one of the largest, most complex and fastest growing industries, U.S. healthcare has drawn some of the greatest clinical minds, scientific researchers and some of the most influential technology leaders to-date to solve the industry’s biggest challenges. As a member of The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), I was pleased to hear from panelists who represent some of the industry’s most prominent organizations about what changes, challenges and innovations they see on the horizon.

Here are my three key takeaways from attending the CHIME Spring Forum that may help guide your organization’s roadmap in healthcare’s next era.

 1.     Innovation Is Advanced by Partnerships (still, again)

We’ve seen through COVID-19 that partnerships create better care. For example, during the earliest days of the pandemic, healthcare partnerships proliferated to address our greatest needs like virtual care and home health. Home-based care, through both telehealth and the hospital-at-home model, has since made a clear impact on patients that has reinforced the increased need to improve patient access and experience.  

There’s considerable opportunity to find areas for improvement—from clinical improvements, data sharing workflows and end user enhancements—one partner cannot, and should not, do it all. This industry is far too complex for that. It is evident that innovations doesn’t come from one company, one start-up or one health system. Collaboration, to the point of Dr. David Rhew, Chief Medical Officer at Microsoft, a CHIME panelist participant, has proven to be a primary component of healthcare transformation.

 2.     Data Insights Are Driving Healthcare’s Rapid Transformation (faster, more than you might guess)

 Nearly every panelist at one point or another touched on the growing pain of interoperability and the need for improved data sharing.  

 The broad adoption of interoperability standards will be key to safely sharing health information across platforms to generate the potential for dramatically improving not only our response to the pandemic, but community-wide health outcomes. The lack of comprehensive and connected systems across the healthcare ecosystem are estimated to cost our industry over $30 billion annually. This hurts all of us, from patients, to providers, to business operations.

As of April 5, the final ONC rules on information blocking and improving interoperability provisions are now in effect and health organizations must get on board. Without data-driven transformation, we lack a final destination. 

 3.     Healthcare Moves To a Hybrid Experience (it’s progress)

We’ve all seen the signs that forecast what’s next. Accelerated by COVID-19, value-based care will continue to be a priority focus to improve the patient experience.

In the words of Dr. Rasu Shrestha, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer for Atrium Health, who led a discussion at the CHIME forum, “the pandemic gave us permission to use the technologies that were right in front of us, but had never been used before in healthcare.” The “shift to virtual care was actually years in the making, where early adopters had the pieces in place to quickly act on the necessary shift to telemedicine.

Telemedicine is but one example of the hybrid experience. As healthcare and IT leaders continue to innovate care models, tools and programs at a rapid pace, patient feedback will be imperative moving forward. In order to move this industry from “surviving to thriving” as Theresa Meadows, Chief Information Officer at Cook Children’s Health Care System noted during the forum, we must focus on consumers and their feedback, and emphasize the role of user experience in healthcare technology. While in-person experiences will exist, virtual adoption is clearly here to stay.

While there is still a significant amount of progress to be made, I was pleased to hear from many leading organizations on the desire to work together to fix some of healthcare’s greatest challenges. Making change happen can be difficult, but creating technology solutions that are flexible, scalable and collaborative can indeed be achieved.