Tapan Shah serves as Director of Marketing for Wavemark.
On May 2nd, Tapan will serve on the panel "Driving Efficiency in the Operating Room with Data Analytics" at Becker's Health IT + Clinical Leadership + Pharmacy conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place May 2-4, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Tapan's session, click here.
Question: Healthcare takes a lot of heat for not innovating quickly. What's your take on this?
Tapan Shah: In my opinion, we can all agree that healthcare is on the brink of a massive change, which will force us to innovate. As for not innovating quickly, it’s important to acknowledge that we are not in the retail space. Healthcare is a regulated industry with a primary objective to keep patients and their information safe.
Some of us might be a little myopic when it comes to thinking through innovation; most of us confine how we consider innovation to be from a product/technology angle. However, this might undermine innovation opportunity around methods of servicing, processes, systems, organizational structures, or even business models. These are large, untapped opportunities where we can innovate quickly to drive greater productivity and efficiency.
Q: What is the biggest evolution you've seen among the hospitals/health systems you work with over the past 2-3 years?
TS: I’ve seen the most evolution in technology-based care models for personalized care and data-driven healthcare:
- Consumer-based care models: patients have access to their vitals and critical healthcare information via online portals. This supports an omni-channel strategy for information sharing and transactions.
- Innovations to manage population health/cohorts of patients with chronic conditions: for example, the “traveling backpack EMT,” or when providers send a professional to patients’ homes who have fall risks, so he/she can lower the cabinets and adjust items in the home to reduce risk of climbing or reaching
- Advancements in genomics and imaging to personalize medicine: one example is advanced 3D visualization of MR/CT images of a tumor before a craniotomy, or HIFU for cancer treatment
- Artificial intelligence that’s prescriptive in nature
Q: Most people understand innovation as starting something new. The lesser discussed side of innovation is when you stop something. What is one thing health systems would benefit from stopping, quitting or banning?
TS: In my opinion, we need to reduce our overconsumption of healthcare. Especially in the US, we - as patients - have become creatures of habit when it comes to utilizing health services. However, it’s not just the patients. Healthcare institutions/providers should break the cycle of just thinking about prescribing tests/medicines/procedures for the millions of decisions made in a day, and start discussing the issue of unnecessary tests and treatments through professional and patient education.
The purpose of technology and innovation is to make healthcare more efficient and affordable. Therefore, providers should take the lead to prevent unnecessary overuse of innovation. . One ideal example of this is that an estimated 25% of Medicare beneficiaries undergo an imaging test for uncomplicated low-back pain, according to this short NCBI article based on a “Choosing Wisely” initiative from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation. (source - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25373832)