Weekly Learnings in Digital Health

Digital health is arguably one of the most exciting industries right now in terms of innovation. Below you can find a quick summary of things I've picked up this week. If you have any questions or thoughts on the topic, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message so we can discuss things further. Thanks for reading!

Contents

1. How to advance healthcare quality through digital health
2. The digitalization of the dentistry
3. How the demand for omnichannel care has impacted Walmart's acquisition strategy

How to advance healthcare quality through digital health

You may hear that digital health's goal is to improve the quality of healthcare, but without defining what "quality" means, how do you know we are improving it?

We could simply be wasting recourses and not providing value to our patients, which isn't why we put all our energy into this industry, we want to improve patient lives. So how do we know if we are?

To start us off, we can define "quality" with four principal components:

1. Patient safety
2. Clinical outcomes
3. Patient experience
4. Value

With our broad definition, we can see the impact of digitalization in healthcare quality:

1. Patient safety: EHR-based decision support tools ensures appropriate treatment is given to the right patients to reduce negative side effects
2. Clinical outcomes: Using digital metrics, HCPs can remotely keep up to date with patients and spot issues much faster as a result.
3. Patient Experience: Digital solutions help with medication reminders and in-hospital navigation to make patients' lives easier.
4. Value: Appointment reminders will reduce costs on the clinician which can increase investment in patient care.

By understanding "quality", we will be in a stronger place to build solutions that has a genuine impact on patients' lives. Think about your own field, once you learned how to measure quality, how can digitalization improve it?

To learn more about digitalization and quality of care, you can read the article from Rocket Health here.

The digitalization of the restorative dentistry

Imagine you have already been to the dentist, had the relevant scans and bit into that horrible playdough type material so restorations can be made for you, but they somehow got it wrong and you have to go back and do it all again.

That means taking extra time off work, while also having to go through that whole mouth-probing process, again.

Thankfully, there are more convenient ways now to get a patient's imprint. It's surprisingly simple, once you implement the tech. Dentists are now able use a full CAD/CAM workflow and complete the full restoration in a single visit.

No more repeat visits, more accurate crowns and prosthetics, and more importantly no more gross gummy stuff you have to bite in.

We learned about this during the latest episode of our podcast with Marilia Lima, senior marketing manager at Dentsply Sirona. You can check out the episode here.

The expansion of Walmart Health

News has just come out last week that Walmart will be strengthening its foothold in healthcare by acquiring telehealth company MeMD. While the financials have not been disclosed, we can imagine the impact this will have.

With this acquisition, Walmart Health, the healthcare subsidiary of Walmart, will be adding nationwide virtual care to its portfolio. This move really is no surprise given the customer demand for omnichannel care, and entering telehealth space is seemingly exactly what Walmart Health was looking for.

"Telehealth offers a great opportunity to expand access and reach consumers where they are and complements our brick-and-mortar Walmart Health locations,” Dr. Cheryl Pegus, the executive vice president of Health & Wellness at Walmart, said in a statement.

This is the latest in a series of healthcare acquisitions by Walmart. Having seen them make acquisitions in the insurance and pharmaceutical space, they've clearly noticed the opportunities of digital health and are looking to make an impact.

Walmart Health's latest acquisition is just another example of the importance digitalization is going to be in healthcare and how companies are changing their strategy to align with current patient needs. What do you think? Do you see this trend accelerating further?

You can learn more about this exciting acquisition on MobiHealthNews.