Technology has been reshaping healthcare at a more rapid pace than ever before, it seems. And it looks like the forecast isn’t going to slow it down any time soon—the space has an annual growth rate of 18 percent from now through 2027. The possibilities are endless, exciting, and efficiency-focused. Healthcare decision-makers and leaders are carefully evaluating all the choices ahead and what investments are worth the time and price tag.
To kick off 2023, we discussed three of the healthcare industry’s top priority tech trends to stay distinct and competitive in the market. These included the adoption of a single data platform, coordination of patient experience over Slack, and expanding processes that promote AI. It’s halftime on the calendar year now, and we’re checking in with a status report on how these trends are shaping up and what we’ve noticed from our client work with leading healthcare brands.
Adopting a single data platform
One of the most critical healthcare trends we’ve seen for several years and continue to see in high demand by both payers and customers is a single data platform to enhance the healthcare experience. The latest turn to make more effective healthcare data is the UK’s National Health Service, caretaker of 65 million people’s health journeys, which has recently announced and is currently evaluating vendor bids to help it build the largest Single Source of Truth (SSOT) of healthcare data. Leaders everywhere understand just how critical organized information, stored in one spot, can be to streamline processes and improve the patient experience. Because this is how everyone associated with a single healthcare interaction gets the same, accurate information when they need it to take the next step.
Salesforce for healthcare is tailored to do exactly this. With secure, HIPAA-compliant restrictions in place and interoperability capabilities to coordinate information from various sources, Salesforce can easily become the SSOT for everyone involved in your healthcare journey, from patients and doctors and nurses to pharmacists and payers and more. Innovative, value-based care starts with reliably having access to the correct information to provide a personalized journey.
Coordinating patient experience via Slack
The second capability we predicted would define 2023 in healthcare is a more coordinated patient experience over Slack. Indeed, our client work so far this year has seen several providers and payers leverage Slack as an integrated tool with its larger CRM solution to make more intuitive, seamless experiences for patients.
Slack is the ideal tool for virtual patient care applications, which are rising in popularity and demand ever since the pandemic. Visits that are administered almost entirely via digital channels depend on a communication and case management channel to track the journey, and Slack is equipped to do just that. Even better, as with everything healthcare related in Salesforce, it’s built to comply with HIPAA regulations,* so you don’t lose a moment worrying about the security of information exchanges happening on the platform.
Expanding AI processes
AI is the talk of the town, as it so often is any industry. It’s an exciting realm of advanced technology, especially when coupled with the rise of the metaverse, that no one can stop talking and speculating about. Salesforce’s new announcement of conversational AI and Slack GPT is only adding to the hype.
Elementary AI applications are already widespread in use, such as chatbots and predictive analytics. We see clients excitedly working towards these and integrating them into their processes regularly. But what’s not as common are the fantastical AI or metaverse takeovers the biggest headlines are often touting. In healthcare especially, there is strong hesitation to race too quickly over to AI technologies, between cost concerns and security questions that remain unanswerable.
Investing in and planning on a more expanded use case for AI in your organization is not a problem—in fact, it’s encouraged. But it’s important to level set expectations and understand where your technology maturity is today so you can best prepare for where you want to go. Many of the fantastic applications of AI we read headlines about are, in fact, many years away for organizations still struggling to master a SSOT, digitized call centers, self-service functionality, and more. To best expand your AI capabilities, do the work and lay a foundation of dependable digital maturity first while making investments and budgets available for more AI applications in the years to come.
Simplus is primed to help healthcare brands in any space—payer, provider, pharma, or medtech—work towards these capabilities and build the technical foundation to support ongoing innovation. Let’s schedule some time to meet with our healthcare cloud implementation experts and see what goals your organization can scale next.
0 Comments