If you are a Consultant and in the business of helping your clients transform their organization and want to do it faster, with less effort then this article is for you.
In this article, you’ll learn about the digital health transformation toolkit – the 6 essential parts that you need to make sure your digital health transformation avoids failure, like 70% of all transformations, and join the 30% club that actually ends in success.
If that’s you, read on.
Harness the Power of Technology
You might have heard me say it in previous videos or posts. Starting your transformation at technology, and adding more technology, is not going to end in transformation.
Technology is part of the solution, but it isn’t the whole solution. Yes, Technology is a powerful tool that digital health transformation consultants should harness to operate digital health and deliver value to customer, but with a lot of things, timing is everything.
The use of digital technology dramatically increases an organization’s performance or reach. Just as important is the technology, so too have the digital transformation consultants become, to guide the Client and the industry through the transformation. Despite what you might have been told, or read, you just cant through more or new technology at the problem, and hope that will end in transformation.
Sadly.. it doesnt work that way.
In this post, you will learn the six (6) essentials of the digital health transformation toolkit that you should master as a digital health transformation consultant in implementing your digital health strategy. Here’s the summary:
- Define the issue, the concept, and the digital tools
- Create a multi-disciplinary collaborative team
- Quicken the pace of technological advancement and start small
- Include patients and their families in the process
- Collect feedback from a wide range of stakeholders
- Conduct trials
Digital Health Transformation Toolkit Improves Accuracy and Efficiency
As a digital health transformation consultant, if you have been looking for a toolkit that will improve the accuracy and efficiency of the digital health transformation you are at the right place. This toolkit will help you so you can implement your digital health transformation successfully.
This tool kit aims to help to avoid the mistakes when implementing digital health. The toolkit will help you in performing the different roles you need to play in the introduction of new innovations (we covered the different hats the Business Transformator plays in a previous post here). If you are a consultant and in the business of helping your clients transform their organization, and want to do it faster then this toolkit is exactly what you need.
If you are a part of the health care transformation consultancy or an independent consultant and want to keep up with the pace of development then you must incorporate these essentials into your healthcare toolkit.
Without further ado, let’s get into the details of the six essential steps of the toolkit.
Digital Health Transformation Toolkit - The 6 Steps
1. Define the issue, the concept, and the digital tools
Digital health transformation is here. Initiate the digital health transformation process by identifying a specific clinical issue that might benefit from a Digital Health Intervention. Our preferred first step is to start from understanding what the Client, or organisation is doing now and learn more about the current state of the organisation and its processes.
As a digital transformation consultant, you have to simultaneously keep a breast of market trends and tools, both for web, desk based and mobile-based tools and apps to help you with the discovery work, but also as potential final solution(s).
Once you identify the issue and the concept, figure out what digital tools can help you implement the digital health transformation seamlessly. Consider ways to combine data monitoring with the action via device and software integrations to make the process faster.
But word of warning with tools… don’t get caught up in the latest fad, or “it thing”. There are some tools out there that are a time sucking hole, have a steep learning curve, and are difficult for non-tech stakeholders to grasp. When that happens, you are at risk of losing your stakeholders, as you need them for their input into understanding their problems completely, if you lose them, you have lost your transformation.
2. Create a multi-disciplinary collaborative team
Once you identify the core issues, it’s time to build a collaborative team. It could be one of the most challenging stages of the digital health transformation process, that makes it more challenging, forming the right team. But with sound advice and following a set process, you can overcome it.
When you work with a dedicated team, you are better able to figure out what works for you the best.
When you work with a dedicated team, you are better able to figure out what works for you the best.
Digital health necessitates multidisciplinary collaboration, which is both tough and rewarding. You need people from the Business, and you need people from the Project. In terms of people from the Business, you need Physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and case managers. From Projects, you need engineers, as well as professionals in behavioral science, graphic design, informatics, business analysts, User researchers and of course, end user and patients to compliment your extended team.
When you have a good multidisciplinary digital health team, you will be able to perform the most thorough assessment of a patient’s situation and then follow up with a complete holistic treatment plan. Teams can collaborate to develop and promote health projects for a variety of communities, as well as provide information to patients in order to establish healthy lifestyle habits. Providing the greatest patient care requires multidisciplinary teamwork, especially during a public health emergency.
A true multidisciplinary team and collaboration should be viewed not just as healthcare’s hidden weapon during a pandemic, but also as the cornerstone for healthcare in the future.
3. Quicken the pace of technological advancement and start small
Once you form a multi-disciplinary team the next stage is to begin creating the solution as swiftly and effectively as feasible. It is critical due to the fast-growing nature of digital health.
The goal of any advance in technology and innovation is to improve performance. In the context of heath care and digital health, its also patient care and user experience.
When you implement a high-tech solution that addresses all three of those areas, you are destined for great results. Be warned however – your technology solution doesn’t have to be earth moving, or recording breaking. It just needs to work, and work better than the current solution, and most likely at a minimum, a step-change from where it is today. There are lots of examples in recent history of established businesses and startups, that abandoned technology projects because they tried to bite off more than they can chew.
Innovation is key to winning the digital health race, but thats realised innovation, not the vapour-ware version – the ones that look promising, that take too long to bring to market, they end up being abandoned. Best start small, and deliver and improve incrementally.
4. Include patients and their families in the process
For an efficient digital health transformation, engage the patients and families at the earliest. This is another challenge for Business Transformators. However, you can reap extraordinary benefits and accelerate the overall process.
Here’s how you will benefit from the inclusion of patients and families during the process. Early and frequently, patients will only adopt new technologies if they perceive them to be relevant, entertaining, and simple to use. You can include individuals, such as partners, family members, and caregivers to get significant results.
Where your problem and solution is centred about patients, and families, focus on improving patient and family interaction to have family-centered care, and that’s how you can seamlessly ensure digital health transformation. Plus, patient and family engagement will aim boost overall hospital and clinic performance.
5. Collect feedback from a wide range of stakeholders
As a consultant you know feedback is key. You have to connect with stakeholders and facilitate meaningful collaboration.
As a consultant you know feedback is key. You have to connect with stakeholders and facilitate meaningful collaboration.
When meeting your stakeholder group for the first time, first impressions count.
To help with that first impression, you need a well-designed introductory slide deck. This pack should have no more than 10 slides (less is more) that explain the importance of the problem, how your solution addresses the stakeholders key problems, a summary of your solution, and the potential impact, followed by your “asks” for the stakeholder (e.g., feedback, recruitment, funding).
Get the feedback, always!
Feedback from a wide range of stakeholders improves understanding, aids engagement and ultimately helps with implementation. Customer/patient facing healthcare practitioners, as well as information-technology specialists, patient engagement leaders, and hospital executives can provide a wide spectrum of input so make sure you include them. Each group brings a distinct viewpoint to the solution’s necessary components for it to function within the system.
Word of caution on feedback – just be wary not to cast your feedback net to big or wide- you will be analysing the data for ever! After a certain number of feedback received, you will find a normal distribution of feedback with the one or two anomalies (or outliers). Don’t get caught in the trap thinking that you need to boil the ocean and get all the feedback from everyone!
6. Conduct trials
Every step before this is a warm-up for the last one, which is crucial for adoption. Where your solution involves or necessitates trials or clinical trials, then it goes without saying. Just like in our approach, we promote piloting. You have to test your proposed solution on a small scale or population to see if 1) its fit for purpose, and works as intended before wider rollout (or iterate, or back to the drawing board).
It’s your responsibility as the digital health transformation consultant a reliable trial or pilot process is executed. What we are talking about here is data and/or evidence based results to validate the solution is fit for purpose (mostly).
What this means it that you may need to work with the Clinicians on designing the trial process, one that either replicates the full end to end patient journey, or a stage(s) of it to prove the intended benefits are realised as planned (see our other article on how to run an effective pilot here).
As with any pilot or trial, at the end of it, be ready soon after to start with the full implementation plan, and keep building on the momentum you have gained to get to this point!
Digital health innovations are focussed and improvised over time to minimize time, increase accuracy and efficiency, and incorporate technology in all possible spheres of healthcare.I hope this toolkit helps you bring these benefits to clinics, hospitals, and other healthcare organizations.
We encourage healthcare professionals to advance digital technologies for a seamless transformation of digital health – and transformation agencies, consultants, and Business Transformators should be at the forefront of the digital adoption process. At HOBA TECH we strongly believe that by greatly boosting access to health data, and investing in digital tools consultants and relevant agencies can have a comprehensive perspective of their clients; as a result, their efficiency will increase and medical results will improve.
We’re always excited to help consultants and professionals who are venturing into digital transformation in health care. Just reach out to us, contact a member of the HOBA TECH team or use the Contact Us form.
Thank you for reading this!
Sincerely,
Heath Gascoigne
P.S. If you want to join our Business Transformator community of like-minded Business Transformators, join the community of over 2,000+ Business Transformators here.
P.P.S. If you want to learn more about business transformation, check out The Business Transformation Playbook here.
For more information, visit https://hoba.tech
