In an op-ed for STAT, Samyukta Mullangi, MD, an assistant professor of health policy and research at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, and Medha Vyavahare, a student at Harvard Medical School in Boston, described three ways in which rebranding as “tech companies first, healthcare companies second” can benefit organizations from digital startups to primary care groups.
For one, they wrote, healthcare innovations often respond better to a series of small-scale pilot programs, the tech world’s typical testing process, than to more rigorous and prohibitive clinical trials and pharmaceutical evaluations. For another, despite a focus on care quality and patient outcomes, when it comes to actually navigating and interacting with the industry, patient satisfaction is rarely a priority, even as tech and most other industries have hopped aboard “the rising tide of consumerism.”
Finally, while investors are often reluctant to fund complex, highly regulated healthcare organizations resistant to change, rebranding as a forward-thinking, tech-focused entity “may reassure investors that a positive return on investment is achievable and realistic,” according to Dr. Mullangi and Ms. Vyavahare.
Essentially, they concluded, healthcare organizations would do well to emulate tech companies’ willingness to experiment, innovate and make mistakes, expand the constraints of clinical research and trials, and invest in better customer service, all in order to deliver “true value” to patients.
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