Why connected healthcare needs a product mindset
The pandemic has accelerated the pace of digital transformation across every industry. In healthcare, this has resulted in a rapid pivot to telemedicine and a reliance on connected technology, putting the quality of digital healthcare experiences firmly in the spotlight. Patients expect the same seamless experience as they have in other aspects of their lives; however, recent research found that digital health tools often fail to keep up with expectations in reality.
The IoT is now the foundation for the delivery of connected healthcare, and many organizations are struggling to ensure it can meet the demands of users. There is little tolerance for performance issues or downtime in healthcare because it can impact critical point of care decisions and, in some instances, have life or death consequences. As the healthcare industry has rapidly embraced digital, there is a growing expectation for seamless connectivity across electronic medical records (EMRs), intelligent hospital systems, connected devices and machines. As providers integrate more smart services to improve patient care, staff workloads and operational decisions, the pressure on organizations will continue to increase.
Think product, not project
However, before the connected hospital can become a reality, providers need to rethink how they approach technology transformation. It’s not enough to simply integrate innovative software and hardware. They must adopt a different philosophy to ensure it meets expectations. This requires a shift from viewing each initiative as a set project with specific goals and a clear beginning and end to thinking about infrastructure as a product that needs to continuously evolve. For example, traditionally, EMRs are managed as a sequence of big projects. The initial project is the deployment, and if updates are required, a new project is needed. A more efficient and effective approach is to view EMRs as a persistent business issue, and therefore you need to manage continuous change. By taking a product-centric approach, timelines and dates are replaced by focusing on delivering a high-quality product and user experience.
Why a product mindset matters
With a product-centric approach, teams are more agile and can react to change as an everyday norm rather than an exception. This requires sprint development cycles that focus on continuous improvement with no endpoint. The Agile methodology’s core tenants are to fail fast, learn, and add value. And once healthcare providers embrace this philosophy, it becomes easier to manage variables and continually strive to improve the quality of digital services to support better patient care and improve clinical outcomes.
With the continued rapid shift towards connected healthcare and telemedicine, providers need to pivot now and rethink how they approach technology transformation. Unless organizations embrace a product-centric mindset, they will fail to deliver on the promise of connected healthcare, which can only be a bad outcome for everybody.
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