Digital Transformation?-?Need of the?hour

The world has been battling COVID-19 for the last few months, and the healthcare community has been on the frontlines doing their best to protect us. They deserve to be recognized and commended for their tremendous efforts, personal sacrifices amid increased medical risk, and the courage and commitment it takes to continue this. We have the deepest gratitude to every one of them.

I’ve been inspired for a long time by the journey and impact created by Apollo Hospitals in India. Suneeta Reddy, MD, Apollo Hospitals, spearheaded the organization’s journey and digital transformation to what it is today. She steered the organization with a dual vision of profitability and impacting people, staying true to her father’s vision.

On International #Nurses day, Suneeta and I had the opportunity to discuss the changing roles of womanhood and their impact in leadership roles and how digital transformation is the need of the hour for enterprises while staying true to their vision at the ET Virtual Tech Summit.

As we spoke about how we spent Mother’s day, I realized how we are both the product of strong women. Generation after generation, women have had the balancing act of juggling their families and careers, and as we enter the 21st century, we see a shift in the roles of women. In the different roles of women in a family and in leading an organization, similarities arise, which are essential for organizations to battle the current crisis.

Here are some key highlights and edited excerpts from our conversation.

On the changing roles of women:

Vani:What are your thoughts on the changing roles of women, and how can we cultivate that transformative work culture?

Suneeta: As women, we have the ability to nurture, and we learn how to nurture families and bring that quality into our businesses. When it comes to transformation, it’s more about how we handle the evolution of our institutions. Transformation doesn’t happen overnight. While people talk about disruption, especially in today’s world, if you are prepared for transformation, you continuously evolve. This journey has happened with Apollo.

We started as one hospital, primarily doing cardiac work. Today we are a network of 70 hospitals, 200 clinics, 1000 pharmacies, and we continue to do a lot more. In the past five years, we’ve recognized the importance of digital and our transformation journey in the digital space has been significant.

As the first part, we set out as agile young women and created the digital infrastructure in our companies. We now have more informed customers who know what they want, and there is a significant shift in the value we are creating for them.

Secondly, with a little bit more maturity, we leveraged digital infrastructure to make it easier, more customers interfaced, and improved services for our customers.

Third, people call it artificial intelligence, but it’s about understanding human intelligence. It is about interpreting data so we can come up with the best input protocols. I think this has been a transformation that’s significant in the past five years.

On crisis planning:

Vani: When it comes to crisis planning, how do you manage the crisis at an organizational level, and how do your philosophies and values shape that?

Suneeta: Our values always come first. All of us have a purpose in life, and I think our values are given life from our purpose, and ours was to create good healthcare in India, to take it as far as possible, and to do it well. Our father wanted to set up healthcare systems in India, as he no longer wanted to send patients to the US for surgery, and he wanted to do it at 1/10th the actual cost. We managed to do that, and after all these years, the mission remains the same.

So, we had created a crisis team and an extremely adept digital team that was in incubation. Due to the COVID crisis, they were tasked to deliver a risk scoring product within 30 days. This product could take down the symptoms of COVID from patients and advise them on when to approach doctors. We have had over a million downloads of this product.

Second, we got very aggressive with tele-concerns and intensified our doctors on calls, and with this, we moved beyond our infrastructure into the patient’s homes, to provide them with the best service.

During the lockdown, you learn many lessons. You can no longer stick to physical infrastructure, and you need to move beyond that. You also learn that you need lean and agile teams that can stay connected. The biggest learning for me was to keep your ego aside because each one of us brought substantial value to the table and to create something valuable, you need to bring it all together. Some of us are good at communication, some at strategic thinking, and some of us know the clinical aspect well. It was all about bringing teams together, and moving the “I” away from it, and giving credit to the team so that they have the enthusiasm and the focus to go forward when dealing with this crisis.

Advice to entrepreneurs:

Vani: From a financial perspective, what is your advice to the entrepreneurs on navigating this situation where they are fighting for survival?

Suneeta: I have two pieces of advice from the last 60 days of valuable time put into Apollo. First is the fundamental aspect of the business, which is creating value for the customer. The customer’s values are constantly changing and are dynamic. So, I think it is essential that you are always creating value for the customer.

Secondly, never waste a crisis. Crisis always brings you an opportunity. Quoting an example, we got into conversations with many nursing homes and asked ourselves, “How do we expand our scope and work with nursing homes? How do we make it a model for the future?” India has 20,000 nursing homes providing care to senior citizens. This was the right time for us to integrate with nursing homes to start conversations with healthcare professionals. There are 1.4 million Indian doctors who are serving the COVID crisis all over the world. It was the best time to share perspectives, look at treatment protocols, and to see what we can do better. This is not going to stop with COVID19 because the ability to learn and assimilate is something we will take into the future.

Lastly, we definitely need to have an online and offline model. We need to be future tested.

Vani: What inspires you and who inspires you during this time?

Suneeta: I am grateful to all the nurses in the system who have been working really hard.

What drives me every day when I wake up is knowing there is so much more that we can do. This is true, especially during crises. For example, during WWII, Alan Turing developed a computer. Every day gives us the opportunity to get better, to improve our clinical protocols, to combine research and innovation, and to bring it all together to create something that is blessed for the next generation of human beings. And it’s supremely gratifying work. I come to work enthusiastic, and I enjoy every minute of it.

You can watch the video of the session here:

I have had a lot of learnings myself over the last 60 days of lockdown.

We can’t be locked down by what we were doing before. Everyone’s world has changed, and it’s not going back to the old normal. There is a normal; however, that is different from before. The capacity to pivot and to cannibalize something you have built, along with agility and flexibility to move to different areas is vital for survival.

There is always an opportunity in a crisis, but sometimes we are limited by what we see as an opportunity and wanting the same, even as times change. This crisis has forced all of us to rethink what we know and go back to the drawing board.

Lastly, our economic impact and economic development must have more women in the workforce. This will happen only when women aspire to lead and not always give way for others to lead and support from the background. I think that encouraging more women to lead is what we have to do to have more women step up and join the workforce.