Healthcare Digital Transformation - book review

The full title of this new book by Ed Marx and Paddy Padmanabhan is Healthcare Digital Transformation: How Consumerism, Technology and Pandemic are Shaping the Future. Although they began the book before the pandemic, they delayed the release to address the way the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital health and is leading the industry toward transformation. Each chapter concludes with key takeaways and action steps which makes the book particularly useful.

In this context, the authors see the need to foster growth areas like mobile, cloud and AI analytics while they see other areas of health IT as plateauing, such as, security and traditional infrastructure and EHR installs. On the influence of consumerism, they promote the idea of enabling patient experience including the digital front door and telehealth.

Based on their interviews with dozens of healthcare CIOs who are quoted throughout, they lay out an "Agile Digital Transformation Blueprint." This includes a prioritization of initiatives and selecting the right partners to move forward. With strong foundations including data ownership and data management, they also warn about technical debt - "the accumulation of underinvestment and short term fixes that eventually limit and enterprise's ability to grow."

Leveraging maturing and emerging technologies includes analytics, machine learning, AI, cloud, voice and robotic process automation. They distinguish partners as: innovators (new ways of doing things), custodians (data and workflow), enablers (rent it, build on it) and arbitragers (doing it cheaper, faster, better).

They have their own digital mature model explained in this diagram from Damo Consulting:

They also cite the HIMSS Digital Health Indicator as an alternative model for transformation.

The book concludes with a summary of key recommendations, such as, a digital transformation office at arms length from daily operations and a chief digital officer with cross-functional buy-in. Also new financial thinking and analysis are key as is reducing IT costs "while managing increasing investment in digital capabilities." No simple tasks but a clear roadmap toward transformation.