Using Tech to Create Impact in Healthcare Non-Profits

The following is a repost and update of an article that appeared in Neoplasia, MAKNA - Majlis Kanser Nasional stakeholder publication. It describes some of the prospects for using tech to enhance the effectiveness of healthcare non-profits and how we're using tech to improve the effectiveness of our own people, something I've been personally heading up from the analytics side.

Using Tech To Create Impact in Healthcare Non-Profits

Traditionally, most organizations have viewed human resources as a largely administrative function, lacking in real impact and, in its worst form, an obstacle to the day-to-day important work they were doing. Yet particularly in the In the non-profit world, it is absolutely crucial that each and every part of the organization is impact-focused. Functions like HR, Finance and IT need to be an active part of service delivery, not simply adjacent to it.

If done properly, an organization like MAKNA can ensure that it is maximising every available sen of the money (and by proxy, the trust) donated to it by supporters to deliver real value and contribute to its footprint to the patients they serve and the public at large. This is where technology can play a massive role in revolutionising how an organization like ours can work.

AI & Advanced Machine Learning

Recently, much of the “oxygen” in the technology discussion has focused on generative AI, Indeed, AI will be a game changer in many office roles. The need for people in a range of functions that are people-intensive or require costly external resources like HR. administrative and financial processing and reporting, marketing and copywriting will certainly be lessened as affordable AI tools come to the forefront.

It’s not so much that this technology will eliminate these jobs altogether. but rather it will allow existing people to take on a more diverse set of tasks with higher direct impact to aid recipients while cutting away a lot of more time-intensive, low-impact work that is currently done allowing non-profits like us to use more of our time and money toward creating impact.

However, we should add that for healthcare non-profits, there is an exciting opportunity to transform the research, screening and treatment options for patients. A recent Nature Journal publication outlined how researchers were able to develop an AI/ML model that was able to process more than 6 million records to identify specific patients who might be at an elevated risk for pancreatic cancer, a rare and deadly cancer that is often diagnosed only at advanced stages because it displays so few symptoms at the onset. In another AI exercise, researchers were able to use machine learning to better spot the cancer in screenings, an exciting development particularly for areas which lack highly skilled doctors who can effectively read basic screenings for the disease.

These two cases are an example of how non-profits that engage in research can potentially fast-track some of their research funds to gain results that are easier to implement, may be able to fast-track beyond the normally slow regulatory processes for new treatments and screening equipment and can display to donors and government bodies real progress in re-shaping the fight against cancer while possibly increasing survival rates and reducing treatment costs.

Tech To Develop Our Non-Profit Team Members

But beyond AI, there are many other great technologies to assist non-profits to use their support functions to make a difference, particularly in the HR space. One particular opportunity is in the training and skills development space.

In the past, robust training solutions were not an option for most non-profits, in part due to their cost but more substantially due to the challenge of how to create content. Fortunately, non-profits can now piggyback on the advancements made during the pandemic to not only deliver content but also to quickly track the skills acquired and mastered by team members, volunteers and partners instantly. The materials themselves can now be easily developed using scripts from AI, images and video taken by phone apps and distributed using affordable learning management systems. This saves on travel costs to train people, (often in rural areas) and allows for an “anytime any place” delivery that is more accessible and effective, particularly given the immense amount of field work in which non-profit workers are engaged.

Increasing Productivity

In current times, there's a lot of competition for donor funds and non-profits need to actively show that they are deploying donor funds to make a tangible impact on the ground. Performance technology is another area which can play a huge advantage for non-profits.

At MAKNA, we recently initiated an integrated performance management program that could be a game changer for our work as a whole. In many organizations, goals are set at the beginning of the year, reviewed at the end of the year and forgotten in the middle.? Consequently, managers see the performance practice as an administrative process with no inherent value while individuals often miss their objectives. The net result is the organization making less impact than would have been desired.

At MAKNA, we’re investing our efforts into performance analytics. By using world-class performance management platforms to place and track our collective efforts online, we are able to proactively identify bottlenecks in key projects and individuals who need additional support and resources.

To start, we studied our past baseline and found individuals were achieving about 40% of their annual goals while the organization as a whole was hitting about 60% of its objectives. Through this new initiative, we’ve already succeeding in driving individual achievement up to close to double the initial rate and are expecting to hit 90% of our organization goals for the year. We’ve achieved this by using the tech to provide a platform for us to clarify, share and analyze every major task. Our HR team then generates insightful performance reports that allow managers to spend their time taking actions that lead to wider impacts for patients and our stakeholders as a whole. This results in our HR being seen as a consultant and partner to our project leaders rather than paper-pushing. For MAKNA, this can result in literally thousands of additional patients served better each year.

As a result of the tech and the hard work of the team, MAKNA today is helping nearly double the patients it did in 2022 and multiples beyond pre-COVID times. The technology has helped us break down silos and encourage data-driven decision making.

Guaging the Public

Finally, in order to improve both internal and external quality, we’ve implemented relatively low-cost surveying technology. This allows us to deeply analyze both employee and patient surveys quickly and insightfully. Results are delivered within hours to the related teams with only analytic intervention from our team. This is a big contrast to the weeks it used to take us to process the surveys. In doing so, we can roll out action plans to address quality issues in a matter of days as opposed to weeks or months as in the past. This can lead to us immediately addressing any cases where our service was less than ideal and allows teams to think of new ways and action plans to implement better processes and add new services across our different operations in record time.

In conclusion, these kinds of technologies hold significant potential for organizations like MAKNA. Not only are they relatively affordable and efficient to roll-out, but they contribute to really show our effectiveness and create transparency for our donors and public and private sector partners to see that we're truly making a difference and worth their support.