The role of a MedTech player in enhancing patient experience

Caring for people is what attracted me and many of you to a career in healthcare. From my time working in hospitals, I have met and worked with passionate, caring, and skilled professionals. I witnessed first-hand the value of treating patients as people throughout their encounters with the healthcare system. What is clear from my experiences, and from the available evidence is that positive experiences heavily contribute towards positive outcomes for people’s health. 

Now, as I celebrate my 15-year anniversary of working with Siemens Healthineers, it is a good opportunity to think about what role the MedTech industry plays in enhancing patient experience.

Technology can help us focus on better human-to-human interactions – and do more with less. 

Consumer experiences in healthcare should not be any different than best-practices already seen in other industries. Studies show that good experience results in loyalty to the healthcare institution in over 70% of the cases. [i] Positive experiences also increase the likelihood that patients will follow treatment and medication instructions. All of this can also lead to reduced healthcare utilisation. With better outcomes and less healthcare utilisation, our total system can be more efficient. In Asia-Pacific alone, an estimated 1.1 billion people are expected to be above 50 years old by year 2025. [ii]  It is also projected that by 2030, the world will be short of 15 million healthcare professionals. [iii] Enhanced patient experience may offer an answer as to how we can do more with less. 

There are multiple factors influencing the patient experience and where medical technology can positively impact clinical outcomes, however, the most significant factor affecting patient experience will remain the quality of the interactions between patients and the healthcare workers who commit their careers to working in this industry. 

We share the responsibility of continuing to design systems that not only positively impact clinical outcomes but that enhance the human-to-human interaction. The more this becomes a central driver of our development process, the bigger the potential for medical devices to play a role in enhancing patient experience. In the end, technology itself cannot “care” for another human being. Medtech should enable healthcare providers to do what they do best: to care for the patient, and this is a central tenet in the responsibility a company like Siemens Healthineers has in our industry and for our communities.

[i] The Beryl Institute

[ii] MedTech Asia McKinsey report Dec2015

[iii] HRH: https://human-resources-health.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12960-017-0187-2#CR29, viewed January 22nd, 2019