Healthcare's Digital Age will continue Despite Big Tech Stumbles

There has been a lot of discussion the past few weeks about Apple and Google restructuring and retrenching their healthcare ambitions and what that means for the digital transformation of healthcare. At this point we have seen a pattern with large tech companies coming into healthcare with large ambitions to only scale them back or exit entirely after a few years. In addition to the aforementioned two we've had:

- Haven

- IBM Watson

- Who remember Microsoft Azyxxi that became Amalga that became Caradigm that became a joint venture with GE before being shoved overboard all together? There were a couple HIMSS shows where Amalga was touted as the application to change healthcare.

Healthcare people look at this and say duh healthcare is hard tech guys. From my experience working with two broader tech companies that had significant focus on healthcare I think at the end of the day that lack of focus is the Achilles heel for large tech companies. No matter how well intentioned the effort in the beginning or how well funded the effort in the end executives and the broader organization have too many other competing priorities. It takes stamina and getting in the weeds to truly partner with healthcare to create long lasting solutions.

All that said the digital transformation of healthcare will only continue to accelerate as a number of items converge to make data the key foundation of that transformation including:

• Transformation on care delivery that makes patient engagement and loyalty a central part of a healthcare organization's mission
• Continued changing payment models that put whole person care and health as the central goal
• Care that is coordinated across the patient journey including social influencers of health

While I think that large tech companies have a role to play in that transformation by providing underlying technologies like cloud infrastructure and the ability to work with data at speed it will be healthcare focused technology companies that can go deep enough to partner with healthcare to create the need solutions to support this massive change. It is in that spirit that I have decided to join Innovaccer an organization committed to the proposition that digital transformation in healthcare starts with getting your data house in order (no easy task). Once data is cleansed, harmonized, and organized analytics and digital transformation can move forward on a solid foundation. Please reach out if you are interested to learn more about Innovaccer and how we can partner together.