A new era of Healthtech

…from horizontal fragmentation to vertical stack-ification

an outside-in view of a Marketer-Analyst

Healthcare system is fragmented! Now, we could endlessly argue that it is due to fragmented HealthIT or vice-versa. But we all know that fragmentation is adversely impacting the quality, cost, and/or outcomes. No one has been able to fix it, despite many attempts to do so. Big healthcare companies spend millions of dollars a year simply to maintain existing systems and comply with regulations, leaving little room for new product and/or model development. 

Legacy health systems can be a thorn in the side of health IT infrastructure professionals. Dated systems may still function but can be a huge liability when it comes to interoperability and all-time & real-time connected-ness. Often faced with strict budgets, healthcare companies find it tough to adopting new technologies & tools. Regulatory compliance also factors into this attitude. IT administrators know that the systems in place are already compliant. Taking these legacy machines out and replacing them requires certification that takes more time and resources.

Very little happened for years but then Covid19 has changed things! Suddenly we see two things happening;

• Incumbent healthcare businesses have doubled-up on their transformation plans to digital-ize their systems
• There has been a blitz of Digital Healthcare companies powered by a combination of digital technologies addressing specific aspects of healthcare business - ‘tele-consultation’, ‘online pharmacy’, ‘connected / embedded diagnostics’, ‘tele ICU’ companies and more. These companies have built the digital-door from the scratch and are struggling to build the digital-backbone that rely on the existing EHR, CRM and other systems for real-time & insightful information!

In a nut shell, the situation appears that most digital transformation of existing healthcare systems is all about ‘topping’ a digital health layer to the fractured & over optimized technology systems, which could eventually break when they get to a certain level of computing of information and/or scale! Under these circumstances, it is hard for existing healthcare companies to get better, it is hard for Digital Healthcare companies to phy-gitally address the Patient-Consumer’s end-to-end needs, and it’s even harder for them to partner/integrate with each other. 

Is there a better way?

Change is hard! We are living in digital times where adding applications, upgrading features, and upgrading functionality happens overnight, literally! What if ‘Healthtech Stack as a Service’ model could address these hard, structural problems, enabling even non-healthcare companies to provide healthcare services?

I believe we are at the beginning of a growing ecosystem of healthcare infrastructure companies, aided by an 'API economy' that both digital health and incumbent players can draw on. These lego-like ‘stack’ companies specialize in building and providing specific building blocks for healthcare. By providing APIs & connectors to their services, the companies democratize their expertise. This means that any one company doesn’t have to know every single thing there is to know about healthcare and its complex and dynamic regulations; another company that specializes in that area has created an API for others to use. It also means that it’s easier to create new healthcare services companies of all sizes and of all kinds. Rather than having to build or maintain regulatory systems themselves, they can just “plug in” to that expertise. 

The benefits of Healthtech Stack as a Service far outweighs the discomfort of change. The thing that excites me about this future is that it can unlock newer ways of care delivery for the Population that have, until now not been able to access health & care. This stack-ification can help provide best of tech-enabled services to power Virtual-first healthcare companies in increasing services' access to Consumer-patients at reduced costs. The Consumer-Patient’s common data allows companies to assess & assign risk precisely and personalize services that could help in improving service outcomes.

Seem far-fetched? It’s not!

This is a brief of the 'Healthtech Stacks' research that I have been working on for the past 3+ months. Plea$e DM me if you want to under$tand the $ame in depth.

PS: The source of the 'All Modern Digital Infrastructure' image is unknown. Sometime back, I received it as an WhatsApp FWD. Please DM for credit!