However, despite promises of innovation, increased access, and improved care, the results have often been mixed at best. Finding a long-term partner to deliver on the promises of digital innovation that enable better patient care and experiences — all the while remaining strategically aligned with your organization and staying nimble — can be very difficult and, until recently, seen as nearly impossible.
But after a cursory look at the healthcare industry, it is easy to understand why it has lagged behind other industries. The regulatory structure around healthcare is notorious for its bureaucracy and maze of misaligned incentives, even before technology is involved. Combined with regulations surrounding the healthcare-technology crossroads and the necessary caution required when lives are at stake, it creates an environment that slows technological influence.
That said, it’s incredibly challenging to find a qualified, nimble, strategically aligned long-term technology partner.
Where healthcare and technology meet: wandering through the dark
Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), hospitals and doctors are required to store patient information in electronic health records (EHRs). While these EHRs contain modules to handle every conceivable health function, they are heavy non-standardized platforms that have historically been difficult to integrate with, and there are strict rules about sharing healthcare data, making it even more complicated for technology partners to build compliant solutions.
And due to the relative complexity of EHR platforms, healthcare organizations have traditionally had a relatively small list of massive “old-school” technology partners to choose from and been forced to pursue slow, expensive, large-scale implementations where the focus is on compliance rather than innovation.
Separate from the ACA, there’s the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. While privacy is indisputably important and the intent of the laws is wholly good, there are a number of hoops technology partners must jump through to satisfy HIPAA compliance conditions, which, coupled with the hefty fines imposed for HIPAA violations, is enough to deter many technology services organizations from even attempting to enter the healthcare space.
Beyond the overarching legal considerations, healthcare organizations — and thus technology partners — often face even more difficult challenges internally. Large-scale technology implementations that require significant change management and must align with an existing technology’s infrastructure can be tricky to manage properly and carry out carefully. While the Zuckerberg-coined “Move fast and break things” mantra may be acceptable when building a social network, it’s not appropriate when it’s lives that are potentially broken.
The right long-term digital innovation partner needs to invest significant time with the healthcare organization to understand its specific pains, opportunities, and considerations. Only once this comprehensive exploration is complete can a partner work successfully to build a long-term technology. This strategy must satisfy the organization’s unique set of technical and operational requirements while ensuring minimal disruption for its patients and internal end users.
Finally seeing the light
All this puts healthcare organizations in a tight spot — they need the right technology solutions and want them now, but too often, tech-enabled innovation that truly delivers better care hasn’t come to fruition. While organizations may technically be compliant, the platforms themselves frequently offer little direct benefit to patient and provider users alike and, in some cases, are already antiquated by the time they are fully implemented and adopted.
Thankfully, there is now light at the end of the tunnel for both healthcare organizations and technology services providers. One great example is the new wave of standards and platforms designed to greatly ease EHR integration that are quickly reaching maturity, and they are already starting to topple the barriers to innovation for both healthcare providers and technology partners. FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Standard) is a recent emergence as an answer to the antiquated HL7 standard, and with it, we will see a number of advantages. It is open source, RESTful, extensible, well-documented, and leverages modern web standards.
Given that the historical standard is pay-to-play and offers none of the aforementioned characteristics, FHIR will be a game changer when it comes to enabling innovation in the healthcare space. Further, there are several newer interoperability platforms that provide a simple modern bridge for EHR data into mobile, web, and smart device applications, as well as a number of HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based mobile app delivery platforms.
Together, these new standards and platforms alleviate the traditionally time-consuming process of creating a compliant integration with EHRs. This then frees up time and resources to focus on delivering better care, opens options for healthcare organizations beyond the usual EHR-specific suspects, and reduces app time-to-market while increasing speed-to-value.
Building a long-term technology strategy with the right innovation partner
For healthcare organizations looking to develop an innovation-focused technology road map and ecosystem, selecting a strong long-term technology partner is essential. Here are some tips to help you get the most from a partnership:
1. Understand who you’re dealing with.
While a partner with a foundational understanding of HIPAA is a necessity, you’ll have to decide whether you want a partner who focuses exclusively on healthcare and possesses expertise in dealing with your specific EHR for decades. Those who have worked extensively with your EHR previously will, of course, be much more familiar with requirements and terminology and require less ramp-up time, but, with the advent of new standards and EHR middleware as discussed above, it is a much larger and more diverse marketplace now, and there are benefits to branching out, too.
Those who aren’t exclusively healthcare-focused can often provide a fresh interpretation on solutions and provide valuable forward-thinking perspectives from other more digitally-innovative industries. They may be able to offer notions others can’t conceive after being heads down in healthcare for so long.
2. Make sure both sides aren’t missing the forest for the trees.
What does your current technology ecosystem look like? What are you happy with, and what are your pain points and constraints? Most importantly, what goals are you trying to meet with new technology solutions, and how can you improve delivery of care and the patient experience?
Discussing your answers to these questions with your technology partner is crucial to finding your best solutions. A small practice just looking to remain up to speed and compliant likely doesn’t want to start with virtual reality simulations, while a larger, digitally progressive hospital is likely looking to go further than a basic EHR system.
Either way, your team should work closely with your technology partner to communicate your unique competitive advantages, as well as your short- and long-term goals. The right partner should demonstrate a full understanding of the situation and challenge the status quo and constraints, all the while developing mutually agreed-upon strategies to balance speed-to-value with the long-term road map.
You’ll also need to let your tech partner know exactly what platforms you work with currently and how those platforms should interact with your new solutions. If possible, connect your vendor with your current tools’ representatives in order to get everyone working toward the same goals.
3. Stay open to new types of partners and approaches.
The type of nimble technology services partner that will truly drive the type of tech-enabled change you want should offer modern (yet proven) methods and strive to educate your team on how to look at product design and the patient experience differently.
A forward-thinking partner that will focus on delivering better care should be a champion of user-centered design. A good tech partner will push hard to introduce product design methodologies that are well-established best practices in the startup community — rapid prototyping, persistent and careful user testing/feedback loops, and iterative pilot programs, for instance.
You may find that these perspectives are found in different places than you’ve traditionally looked. Stay open-minded in regards to selecting an innovation partner, and assess a variety of potential firms with different sizes and focuses (and price points) to ensure you select one that aligns with your vision and can meet your goals.
A happy union between the healthcare and technology sectors isn’t just a pipe dream. In fact, we’re closer to narrowing the innovation gap between healthcare and other industries now more than ever thanks to new standards and a variety of platforms that greatly ease extensibility and enable creativity while maintaining a firm grip on compliance.
While the next generation of healthcare technology is still a work in progress and open questions around security and the non-real-time nature of FHIR remain, we are making great strides toward a more innovative future healthcare landscape, and forward-thinking healthcare executives should be paying close attention.
Healthcare standards and practices and the nuances of each individual healthcare organization will always require significant additional exploration from a third-party technology services partner, but with clear communication and expectations from both parties, a strong long-term partnership can create meaningful innovation and a lasting positive impact for both providers and patients.
Kevin Yamazaki is the founder and CEO of Sidebench, a leading digital product and venture studio that creates custom software and apps for clients across healthcare, finance, entertainment, and consumer product industries. As a passionate solutions architect and product designer, Kevin is driven to create. Because of his unique innovations, Sidebench has a growing reputation for solving its clients’ largest unique challenges through custom integrations, internal tools, and consumer-facing applications. Forbes listed Kevin in its 30 Under 30 Class of 2017.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker’s Hospital Review/Becker’s Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.
