Author: Simon Meier

Giving European Healthcare enterprises, a digital upgrade is hard. Let’s explore the challenges and some of the lights on the horizon. The prosperity and health of all of us depends on keeping our health care systems effective. To make sure this is achieved and remains affordable, we need to leverage digital transformation.

The Problem:

ChatGTP is a great listener and gets higher marks for interaction than your doctor…. But when you get to talk to your real doctor next, they take notes on paper, maybe sit behind a screen while you answer questions. The problem is obvious. Even more so since all our experience during the pandemic. But what is keeping us from having a similar experience like we do when we navigate without a paper map, pay cashless, travel without a paper ticket? Why do we feel like we are still in the scenes from 90’s TV shows like ER or Gray’s Anatomy.

The Challenges:

1.     Moving large organisations to new digital behaviours is unquestionably difficult. Limited resources, in particular limited staff, available time and funding are very obvious limitations in healthcare, after all these institutions have to deliver care and practice medicine continuously. The pandemic has been an extraordinary stressful event and has exacerbated these limitations. It has also very much highlighted the need. Acceptance is growing how digital means are a solution to many of the problems of enterprises.

2.     What also complicates the situation is complexity. Products have to clear high hurdles of evidence before they are adopted. Participants have an inherent risk aversion to be an early adaptor or make a mistake. This in particular leads to very long life cycles and high hurdles for innovation and disruption. Many startups struggle with these conditions and cannot provide the reinvigoration other industires benefit from.

3.     This lack of innovation is further exacerbated by the state of the industry. The installed base is still quite fragmented with vendors offering software based on old architecture, often installed on premise and highly customized. A nightmare for maintenance and interoperability. Some of the consolidation players are focused on offering a broad menu, but struggle to consolidate the installed based to one offering. Furthermore many vendors have a small footprint and limited margin available to reengineer their offering to new architecture. In many industries such a setup would be an invitation for disruptors to enter the market and gain customers. Given the inherent risk aversion of the customer base and the intense procurement processes the entry barriers have kept new entrants very limited.

4.     The same hesitation to adopt new software or new solutions is also behind the very present and pronounced prejudice towards cloud based solutions. AI and many modern software solutions rely on some elements run in the cloud. This limits the availability of many solutions in setting refusing any cloud settings. There are many innovations which make the cloud more yours, more private and controlled. These evolutions are enabling a gradual move towards inclusion of cloud based solutions and interoperability between and across solutions and institutions.

Light on the horizon

While the challenges will remain with us on our path and we will find ways to covercome these hurdles there is light on the horizon.

1.     People have moved. The pandemic has proved that people interacting with healthcare are very ready to do so digitally. They are used to many digital tools and they will use them to interaction with healthcare. Search, communication, and scheduling find high adoption. Institutions are moving to accommodate these with solutions which comply with security, privacy and manageability in their context.

2.     Governments have moved incentive, reimbursement and subsidies models forward to foster the digital transformation of healthcare systems and institutions. Some of these might have to be evolved further based on initial experience. But the good thing is we have action and movement instead of paralysis and opposition.

3.     Vendors have moved as well. Some are solving this on an individual level with a walled garden approach. But the bright side is the many players who are embracing interoperability and ecosystems. Cloud provider like Microsoft, Amazon and Google are creating technology ecosystems which enable a market of solutions. Established long term partners have opened up their customer relationships and installed platforms to integrate 3rd party solutions or even evolve to an ecosystem offering. New players have combined prudence and necessity and have built ecosystem ready setups to scale faster and requiring less capital.

4.     Cloud refusal is making room for goal oriented cloud integration. After the introduction of GDPR there was a moment of hesitation to see how people would react and to find good solutions to implement. With growing experience with the topic and a growing confidence of use in a broad set of contexts (Booking, payment, Travel) driven more digital with the pandemic there is a growing openness to consider and adopt solutions leveraging the cloud. In particular since the value proposition of more interoperability or more digital processes receives more buy in year after year.

Panel at Bits & Prezels Health in Munich

I am looking forward to have a lively debate on these topics at the upcoming Bits & Pretzels conference. It will be an honor to moderate a panel with Michael Sahnau from Microsoft, Humbert Gimenez from Roche, Clemens Janus form Incepto and Philipp Weller from Sana Kliniken. We will discuss the hurdles keeping the digital level up back and share examples where we overcome these hurdles. I am curious to learn more about what works. I am greatful to the panelist to join me and share their views.

Happy to hear your comments and looking forward to see you at the conference.