Michael MeucciPresident and CEO, Arcadia.
The combination of technology and high-quality data is arguably the most important asset for businesses around the world. A overview of healthcare technology leaders by my company found that 83% of decision-makers agree that effective use of data helps organizations remain competitive and resilient despite the forces of economic and digital transformation. In the same survey, 84% of leaders say their organization’s current priorities are related to technology.
While many businesses face pressure to reduce costs and boost profitability, successful organizations often see technology as a key differentiator that drives innovation and growth.
Why strategic IT investments matter
Technology is a key component of innovation, whether it’s a new product, an app, or an improved internal system that streamlines employee workflows. However, the technology should also support highly functional, scalable systems that deliver resilience, help organizations drive growth and better serve customers. The CrowdStrike outage, for example, affected Delta particularly hard. Microsoft is credited many of Delta’s challenges for the company that it has not “modernized its IT infrastructure.”
The evolution of technology is not just about new, shiny innovations. It needs to increase flexibility and create layoffs that keep business as usual. The balance between disruption and “quiet innovation”—the behind-the-scenes work that’s less flashy but necessary—is critical to continued growth.
Using technology to optimize consumer experiences
Continued investments in technology can reduce friction for the end user, which is increasingly important as consumer needs and expectations are constantly changing. Technology can help organizations stay ahead of the curve by creating differentiated, more personalized consumer experiences.
Take Starbucks’ online ordering platform for example. The app helps manage demand and ensures consumers get what they order faster, providing a better customer experience. As revolutionary as it was for the time, Starbucks didn’t stop there. The company has taken a step-by-step approach to deliver continuous innovation. Increase it can be incredibly effectiveand in this case, it allowed Starbucks to maintain its existing ordering system while building and enhancing its application to improve productivity and the consumer experience.
Optimizing the consumer experience is much needed in health care as our ecosystem revolves around people—patients, providers, nurses, and administrators—and healthcare leaders can look to other industries for inspiration. THE huge amount of healthcare data available today it also means that there has never been a more important opportunity to reinvent care delivery. In the Arcadia survey, improving the patient experience is a high priority for 40% of respondents, with 35% focused on improving patient outcomes and 29% focused on improving patient engagement and care.
One Medical is proving what’s possible in healthcare by creating a consumer-centric, technology-integrated primary care platform. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a tool that measures customer satisfaction and loyalty, and while the The average healthcare industry NPS is +58One Medical’s NPS is +90. This is largely due to the fact that One Medical offers a highly sophisticated experience that aims to put the patient first easier appointment scheduling and prescription refills. This infrastructure also supports scale and improves the bottom line—a necessary driver in an industry where the average Hospital profit margins range from 4%.
Strategic IT investments to stay ahead of the curve
I strongly believe that the leading companies of the future will develop and improve technologies that will allow them to stay ahead of the curve and deliver superior consumer experiences. If we look back to 1998, when Google introduced its search engine, it fundamentally changed the way consumers find information, and society quickly became accustomed to the expected performance of the search engine.
Today, LLMs like Generative AI and ChatGPT support the same functionality. However, the output is quite different. Users enter a question and AI tools can quickly produce a complete, holistic and conversational answer without the user having to pull together information from multiple sources on their own. While giant leaps like this require significant consumer support, companies are always looking for the next moment of disruption with technology on their side.
Take health care for example. Together, as the healthcare innovators of the future, we can apply this thinking to the way we deliver healthcare in the following ways.
Integration of AI tools
We could create the next-generation electronic health record (EHR) where developers integrate AI tools more seamlessly. Instead of the EHR giving providers—the consumers of the EHR—a large amount of information to synthesize manually, AI tools can reduce frictionquickly sift through a patient’s chart, create a concise patient summary, and recommend appropriate next steps. The data is already displayed how AI tools can significantly reduce preparation time for patient visits, helping providers streamline workflows and deliver high-quality care faster. A next-generation EHR would accelerate this trend.
Utilization of high quality data
High-quality data is essential for any IT investment. We need to gather all available data into a single source creating reliable data sets which can feed AI models. We’re already seeing organizations invest in cloud-based storage platforms, data integration solutions, and data and analytics platforms, and the possibilities will continue to grow.
Upgrading Employees
User buy-in is vital to its promotion widespread adoption of technology, especially AI tools. Employees are eager to learn how to use new toolsand organizations must provide training to help with implementation, adoption, and safe and ethical use.
Conclusion
Leaders in nearly every industry can use these IT investment strategies to help unlock new opportunities for their organizations. Whether driven through incremental changes or major transformational leaps, effectively leveraging technology can help maximize benefits for customers and internal stakeholders while improving the bottom line.
Importantly, we must remember that we work in people-first businesses. In healthcare and many other industries, customer needs are evolving and becoming more sophisticated. Technology can enable us to address these opportunities head-on and deliver better products, platforms, experiences and results.
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