How to address challenges in Digital Technology Adoption in Healthcare?

Digital technology can play a crucial role in increasing operational efficiency, reducing TAT & associated costs and enhancing patient engagement. However, the adoption of digital technology solutions in healthcare settings has been largely at the periphery.

The challenges in the adoption of such solutions include difficulties in the ability to demonstrate the clinical utility of the solution and getting the buy-in from the relevant stakeholders.?Additionally, one needs to manage multiple risks associated with it like:

• Solution Fitment
• Ease of Use
• Cost of Implementation
• Compatibility with existing systems and devices
• Regulatory Compliances

In order to ensure that the solution meets the requirements, it is really important to do the Pre-Deployment Evaluation and Post Deployment Evaluation.

Pre-Deployment Evaluation: It focuses on rigorous evaluation of the solution, prior to its deployment. To make the adoption of the solution in a healthcare setting a success, some questions need to be addressed by the concerned stakeholders of the healthcare setting and the solution provider:

1. Clinical Utility: What is the clinical outcome of the solution and How will the solution achieve the desired outcome? Is the solution flexible to accommodate the changes in Clinical care guidelines, Standards of Care and the environment in which the solution is deployed?
2. Economic utility: Economic utility asks the question of whether there is a real net benefit from the investment in deploying the solution considering the cost of operational integration. For this, the solution must deliver cost-savings or increased efficiency in the healthcare setting
3. Stakeholder Involvement: Who are the intended users of the solution and have all the stakeholders been involved while coming up with the solution requirement and the intended outcome?
4. Deployment Setup: Is the deployment environment equipped to handle the resource requirements of running the solution or is the solution optimised to run in the intended healthcare setting?
5. System Integration: How will the solution be integrated with the existing HIS, EHR or other systems & platforms within the healthcare setting?
6. Maintenance: Who will be responsible for the continuous monitoring and updating of the solution?
7. Liability: What will be the extent of legal & ethical liabilities?
8. Compliances: What are the applicable regulatory compliances & how will the solution ensure that those are met?

Post Deployment Evaluation: In this mode, the solution is deployed in the healthcare setting and used to achieve the desired outcomes. However, no actions are taken on those outcomes. Instead, the outcomes are evaluated for their relevance & effectiveness to the action that can be taken by the concerned healthcare stakeholders and the associated incentives of those actions. This, in turn, allows testing of the usability of the solution and benchmarking it against the reference criteria.

Healthcare Innovation Challenge (HIC) is a Use Case focussed initiative that has a unique framework to overcome the challenges of the adoption of digital technology solutions.

Having completed two successful editions, NASSCOM Center of Excellence - IoT & AI is coming up with the 3rd edition i.e Healthcare Innovation Challenge 3 (HIC 3). The timelines for HIC3 are given below:

Some of the HIC Use Cases:

We are partnering with Healthcare Providers, Hospitals, Diagnostic Chains, Pharma Companies and Healthcare Insurance Companies to Accelerate their Digital Technology Adoption. Please let us know in case you are interested in any of the HIC Use Cases or want us to focus on a new use case relevant to your organisation.

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For more information, please drop a note to us at [email protected] and our team will revert instantly.