Taking our own transformation medicine: how to integrate digital health into healthcare

October 8, 2015 | by

An antidote to Dan Munro’s top-down and pessimistic vision of healthcare transformation (having much in common with Ezekiel Emanuel’s, see below) are two parallel prescriptions on integrating digital health into our healthcare systems and maybe, just maybe, transforming it.

The first acknowledges basic reality: we have all the health tech and funding we need right now. We are way beyond the fictional one device, app or service that will deus ex machina and transform healthcare. What we in the field need to do is integrate them, measure (and integrate) the data, get these systems and services into the home and–interestingly–seek out atypical early adopters. Your users/patients may not be the sexiest market for cocktail party chatter–older adults, the developmentally or cognitively disabled–and you’ll have to think beyond smartphone apps, but here is an opportunity to make an impact on a real, large, high-need and open market which can improve care, outcomes and reduce/redistribute cost over time. How The Digital Health Revolution Will Become A Reality (TechCrunch) Hat tip to reader Paul Costello of Viterion Digital Health.

The second analyzes a key point often neglected in healthcare discussions but well-known to students of behavior, like marketers: the patient’s perception of value. (more…)

Digital agenda items: past and future

June 29, 2015 | by

There’s much to learn about future digital trends from an analysis of what’s happening in South Korea. For this, the Korea Communications Report provides fascinating reading. For example, the bar charts on page 56 (yes it is worth scrolling that far) demonstrate the huge surge in video usage towards hte end of last year as 4G became established. As Prof Mike Short (for whom I am grateful for this and other pointers in this post) commented “It may prompt some ideas about Broadband and higher speed Mobile could help in Healthcare – eg the Dr will see you now”.

Another really interesting resource is the EU’s Digital Agenda Scoreboard 2015: Strengthening the European Digital Economy and Society which enables you to explore all sorts of statistics about European life, and then visualise it in a variety of different ways. It will be a real help for those ‘scene setter’ slides at the start of a presentation. Highly recommended.

Another interesting pointer was the FT which had a major supplement on digital health (more…)