Reflections from an unexpected sabbatical

Unexpected life events can be a catalyst for growth and reframing the path ahead. Four months ago, series of unexpected events gifted me a pause. My professional life came to a screeching halt and a sudden health diagnosis allowed me an opportunity to experience our healthcare system from the vantage point of a patient.

I have spent 20+ years of my career in healthcare, with the last decade dedicated to my passion of leveraging technology and innovation to create person centered care. As industry evolved, so did the buzz words in my portfolio of professional experience as well as the range of new innovative concepts, technologies, and methodologies I worked with. Yet, my fundamental commitment has remained towards leveraging technology, data, and innovation as enablers of whole person- care. I have long and passionately advocated that the operations should lead technology, and not the other way round. My recent experiences, and the pause, made me ponder:

??How do we keep humanity at the forefront in our race to digitize health and healthcare experience?

??Quoting Dr Rajagopal: “We do what is convenient and more profitable. Without dignity and love, medicine is incomplete”. ?How do we make human centered health experience a core part of our technology strategy?

??Are we too busy treating illness that we have lost the central focus on creating health and wellbeing in healthcare?

??Data and tech are fun (Oh yes, I wear my techie nerd badge proud!), but how can technology leader enable innovation that is centered in humanness and facilitate wellbeing of communities we serve?

I profess, these questions have been explored by many thought leaders and plenty perspectives are available on the internet of things. However, having firsthand consumed most digital technologies and episodes of care (illness) models across states, I realized that we as an industry, predominately, miss the mark in bringing health back in health care.

As I spent heavily drugged sleepless nights, and as a committed learner of all things new and old, I mulled on - what are my opportunities to evolve? What do I want to step into and co-create go forward? How to I leverage my experience in technology and innovation and bring forth new perspectives?

I end my sabbatical with few realizations that I hope to actively integrate into my path ahead:

??A transformative healthcare experience (digital or in person) requires rethinking everything from culture to coordination of care to human centered experience, for all involved. We must defragment the healthcare experience first, before we continue to weave in more solutions

??While experience has started to achieve parity with quality and safety, organizations struggle to find synergies.?A technology leader plays a pivotal lead role in building a synergistic blueprint that brings back human centered design at the heart of it all

??Digital solutions play a fundamental role in the effective partnership between the patient, the family, and the healthcare team to collaboratively achieve the patient’s health-related goals. Broadening the focus from health to wellbeing, will require technology leaders to expand the blueprint include integrative health models

??While we have traditionally focused on provider and care team needs; patient, family, and community voices are louder and stronger. They significantly impact the ability to achieve meaningful outcomes from digital health investments. Change management, stakeholder engagement, and even community engagement is going to be an integral part of innovation leaders’ bag of superpowers

??and yes, unabashedly stepping into head and heart work, alike, is going to be an essential add to that special bag of superpowers (and this I am most excited about!!)

I look forward to the continued journey ahead and sharing my insights through the growth!