Viraj Patwardhan serves as Vice President of Digital Design and Consumer Experience for Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health.
On May 3rd, Viraj will serve on the panel "Enhancing the Patient Experience Using AI" 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 Viraj's session, click here.
Question: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?
Viraj Patwardhan: Healthcare used to be considered behind when it came to adopting new technologies. This simply isn’t the case anymore. Healthcare has now fully embraced technology and in addition it now widely uses human-centered design to tackle difficult problems. Venture capital investments in healthcare have increased from 9 billion to 23 billion over the past decade . This is the perfect time for entrepreneurs and innovators to use their skills to directly improve lives. Health problems may not be easy to solve but they are extremely rewarding.
Q: What one strategic initiative will demand the most of your time and energy in 2019?
VP: The application of human-centered design into the development of an efficient, future-focused organization that brings exceptional value and quality to patients, students, employees, donors, and the community will demand most of our time in 2019. The Digital Innovation & Consumer Experience (DICE) Group at Jefferson not only designs and develops solutions for current problems in healthcare, we set out every day to reimagine how health care will be delivered tomorrow. To achieve this vision, we examine existing workflows and patient journeys and single out the moments that when refined, even incrementally, can dynamically improve the overall experience. Applying human-centered design principles allows for creating simpler and more intuitive experiences for our patients and makes work less complex and more rewarding for our staff.
Q: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?
VP: Healthcare is a cautious industry due to our responsibility to our patients. Ethically, healthcare organizations need to exercise caution when innovating to prevent any harm to patients. If we get it wrong, there are tremendous consequences. We are asked to focus on the patient/customer experience, and continually move to provide value-based care. As the demand for improved hospitality in healthcare grows, so grows the need to improve the overall experience for its consumers. People come to healthcare organizations expecting better experiences, yet the complex and interwoven nature of healthcare creates consumer journeys filled with gaps, inconsistencies and barriers. Jefferson’s leadership, and especially, President and CEO, Dr. Steve Klasko, firmly believe that we must leverage digital technologies and consumer-oriented digital solutions to transform healthcare and education. Innovators/entrepreneurs need to enable the development of transformative digital solutions in concert with local clinical and academic teams, industry partners and collaborators, existing solutions, mashups, and platforms.