The digital transformation of healthcare has been progressing at pace since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic; but in the midst of rapid innovation, earning the trust of consumers is still vital.
What lies on the horizon for healthcare in 2021?
After a year in which remote healthcare technology, or telemedicine, saw rapid and widespread uptake as a means of treating patients safely during a pandemic, the healthcare sector has made huge gains in terms of digital maturity. At the same time, there are still obstacles in the way of its transformation.
While healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients alike have been willing to adopt health tech during the Covid-19 pandemic out of necessity, whether this pace of transformation will continue beyond the pandemic depends heavily on trust. Not just trust in the effectiveness of telemedicine, but trust that technology providers can be relied upon to safely and respectfully process health data, which is a uniquely sensitive category of data.
“Healthcare is going to be a fascinating sector to watch in 2021 from a digital, data and technology perspective,” says George Harris, Chief Product Officer and former Analytics & Technology Director at London and Dallas-based performance marketing agency Three Whiskey, which works with healthcare and pharma clients such as Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Texas Healthcare Resources and Avantor. “We’ve seen lengthy healthcare digital transformation programmes being cut in half during 2020. We’re at quite a pivotal time, really, given the rapid investment that has taken place.”
A data and product specialist with more than 15 years’ experience in digital and tech, Harris is keenly interested in the digital transformation of healthcare and the role being played by data. He predicts that in 2021 we will see healthcare organisations focus intensely on scaling, optimising and measuring their services – but “trust remains the arbiter of data systems and is a precious commodity. The rush to solve the global pandemic using data and technology is placing great pressure on the foundation of trust as we go into 2021.”
I spoke to Harris about how healthcare organisations should approach data in the midst of this “pivotal time”, how they can demonstrate trustworthiness with consumers’ most confidential information, and what other obstacles lie ahead when it comes to data and innovation – as well as why he is confident that telemedicine will have staying power even after the threat of Covid-19 has subsided.
How healthcare organisations can earn consumers’ trust with regard to health data
Harris sees the question of data privacy and the need to earn consumer trust in how data is handled as one of the biggest challenges facing the healthcare industry as it undergoes digital transformation. “There’s so much potential for the advancement of technology within healthcare, and we’re at the point in the pandemic where there is also significant momentum around advancing digital capabilities within organisations,” he says.
“But at the same time, for all the potential of those technologies, they are really nothing without robust, extensive, accurate data underpinning them.”
What steps can organisations take, both internally and externally, to not only ensure that they have good data governance but to persuade consumers to trust them with their data?
“Trust is – as we all know – incredibly fragile. It’s a process and not an endpoint,” says Harris. “It’s incredibly hard to earn and maintain – and incredibly easy to lose. It has to be treated very seriously.
“Organisations really need to show, not just tell, that they take data seriously – treating data safety in the same way that patient safety would be treated – and communicate that to patients externally, even in things like brand and value proposition messaging, to show that data security and privacy is a priority for them.
“Internally, it’s really about baking that data privacy and security into the organisation overall: investing in making sure the systems are secure, and making sure the individuals who are handling data are trained appropriately so that regulation is followed and the organisation takes a minimal approach to the data that’s made available, so that they’re not collecting data that isn’t needed. It’s also important to apply rules of governance across the organisation; internally, those areas really need to be invested in and taken seriously.
“Overall, I think that if organisations are transparent about the data they’re collecting and how it’s going to be used, that definitely helps,” concludes Harris. “I think that GDPR has laid bare a number of the core requirements there, with regard to how organisations should handle users’ data. Giving users control over the data that they share and also who it’s shared with is crucial. And if you are collecting data as a healthcare organisation and sharing it with third-party vendors, then you must vet those vendors appropriately; make sure that they adhere to your data standards as well, and that you take a duty of care beyond just the services that you provide.
“Again, it’s about making sure that you’re only collecting the data that you really need to provide the service – and if you are collecting data that instinctively a patient might have some reluctance about sharing, then you make very clear to them exactly why you need that data, so that they can have that confidence that you’re behaving with integrity.”
Working Effectively with Data Teams
Blockchain, 5G, and the ‘reputational baggage’ of innovation
Demonstrating privacy and security isn’t the only challenge that the healthcare sector faces with regard to data. Harris believes that the challenge of data interoperability is second only to the challenge of data security, with data often needing to be stored by and transferred securely between a number of different healthcare providers. The systems that would facilitate this are often developed and rolled out quite slowly.
“For example, I understand that the design and rollout of the Integrated Electronic Patient Records programme across the NHS has been ongoing for some time,” says Harris. “The NHS has made huge progress with the digitisation of the service – but there are those central points where there are significant challenges to resolve.
“My take on it is that interoperability is the biggest data challenge, aside from security. It’s about the trust and integrity of data that’s shared between multiple systems: the management and updating of patient records, for example.
“This is where blockchain might come into its own – my understanding is that it’s being looked at quite seriously as a way of being able to maintain the integrity of the records that are updated, and at the same time, maintain a level of security.”
Harris notes that 5G will also help considerably with the transference of vast amounts of data at high speed in healthcare – but that technologies like 5G and blockchain come with their own trust barriers and ‘reputational baggage’ in the eyes of consumers. “There are definitely some aspects there to unpick – to make sure that, if those infrastructural technologies are going to be brought into healthcare – and I think they will be – that it’s done in a way that is cognisant of their reputations and the fears that might arise as a result.”
The same could be said for smart technology, which although increasingly normalised – Harris points out that it’s difficult to buy a television, radio or speaker nowadays that isn’t ‘smart’ – still incurs some consumer fears of ‘always listening’, intrusive technology – an image could be exacerbated by health devices that consumers know are constantly collecting and sharing their data.
Harris believes this could become a particular issue if using wearable devices to monitor health in the workplace becomes normalised – for example, to flag up signs of poor mental health or ensure that they aren’t putting in excessive amounts of overtime. While this is a mostly theoretical idea at present (although the BBC recently reported on one solution that uses proactive reporting instead of passive monitoring), it could find more favour among employers in the era of remote working among concerns about burnout and employee inability to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
A 2018 survey of 2,000 UK adults by AXA and YouGov found that 51% were prepared to wear devices designed to monitor mental health and flag early signs of trouble, provided they were offered free of charge. However, 55% said they would feel uncomfortable about sharing the information gathered with their employer, while 50% were prepared to share data only if it was anonymised and could be used to develop wellbeing strategies for the workplace.
Harris references a categorisation system for automated technology used by Daniel Newman and Oliver Blanchard in their book Human/Machine: The Future of Our Partnership with Machines that classifies technology as ‘Big Brother’, ‘Big Mother’ or ‘Big Butler’ to illustrate why this type of health monitoring in the workplace could lead to a backlash against smart technology. “Big Brother is really intrusive surveillance; Big Butler is very much task-based, and will just do the things you ask for, like filling in a tax return. Big Mother in the middle is the technology that means well, but can be overbearing – to the point where it becomes intrusive.
“Particularly when it comes to health, and that type of proactive monitoring where your smartwatch is telling you to stand up and move around, or you haven’t hit a target – if you take that to the next level, I think we might see some reticence if people feel like technology is coming to the point where it’s overbearing and unwanted.
“So again, I think it’s important to be really clear, when companies are collecting data, about the reasons why the data is being collected and that the data is only being used for that purpose.”
Digital Transformation and the Role of Data
Looking ahead: will telemedicine adoption continue beyond the end of the pandemic?
The leaps forward in adoption and normalisation that health technology took in 2020 were brought about by necessity, but facilitated by some loosening of restrictions, for example in the United States where regulations that had prevented many people from accessing remote healthcare under Medicare were relaxed. I asked Harris if this lessening of oversight, while good for innovation, could cause issues for telemedicine adoption in the long run, for example by opening the doors to lower-quality tools and technology.
“I see telemedicine growth as being a very positive thing overall,” says Harris. “It’s improved accessibility to care for vulnerable people, and there’s evidence that triaging using telemedicine is vastly more efficient in terms of the ability to diagnose conditions. In general, it allows for greater efficiency with regard to the resourcing of healthcare provision – if fewer people are coming into surgeries for appointments, particularly for things like repeat prescriptions and symptoms that can’t be seen on the body.
“At the same time, it’s true that disruptive technology environments do create a sense of risk. In healthcare – and other sectors where you’re handling confidential patient data – you can’t ‘move fast and break things’. It doesn’t work.”
He points out that there is a tendency to over-rely on app stores to be the gatekeepers when it comes to preventing low-quality or potentially misleading tools from reaching the market. While companies like Apple and Google have taken steps in the past to weed out problematic apps, most notably in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, they are not healthcare specialists, and often rely on the authorities to be the arbitrators of what is safe – such as when Apple removed all Covid-19 related apps from the App Store that weren’t produced by a government body or health institution.
Harris believes that official healthcare bodies like the NHS need to begin, or continue, to take a proactive role in authorising new apps and tools, as well as in awarding funding and grants to up-and-coming startups so that they have the means to test and scale in a safe and approved manner.
However, he is optimistic about the continuing adoption of health technology even beyond the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, believing that consumers will continue to take advantage of telemedicine in “the majority of cases”, thanks to the flexibility and convenience that it provides.
“There are some levels of care that need that face-to-face interaction with a physician,” Harris says. “But even when it’s not mandated – in a world where we all, both patients and healthcare professionals, feel generally quite time-poor – people tend to only go and see a physician when they really need to. I think giving the extra option there is really valuable. And you won’t need to see a local GP – your physician can be based anywhere. If they’re the specialist in the condition that you have, then you won’t need to travel to see them and get their advice.
“The more flexibility that the healthcare service can provide, the more efficient it can be – so it’s win/win, really, providing that attitudes to privacy and security are maintained.
“It’s a very interesting time to be involved with health technology in any form,” he concludes. “Healthcare is now showing the attributes of more digitally advanced sectors like finance, IT, communications and media – improved accessibility, improved personalisation of services, and a level of insight as well.
“If you compare this to how ecommerce has developed over the past 15 years – when you ordered a product online 15 years ago, the experience, the visibility over the delivery process and arrival times, the returns process – all of these things were so different. Whereas when we look at where ecommerce is now, it’s completely streamlined. Expectations are really high.
“Healthcare will definitely get there, but obviously it needs to tread a bit more cautiously than ecommerce can.”
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