Transform ‘digitally’ la caterpillar into a butterfly!

By Rahul Avasthy.

Rahul Avasthy is a renowned expert in digital transformation and customer experience. He is based out of Chicago, United States of America working for a multinational Fortune 150 company. Rahul specializes in complex problem-solving via design thinking, service design methodologies, and actively speaks on digital transformation.

It’s important to note that ‘Digital Transformation’ brings an irreversible change.In future, predictive digital interventions, notpills, will be the first line of defence and digital experiences would evolve from channel silos to open ecosystems.

Today, when the entire world is getting connected, interacting and converging through the internet, it becomes critical for all businesses to deploy technology and create easy to use experiences to harness this scenario. Thus, driving home, the point that how crucial it is to irreversibly transform via use of digital technology in the current business & social scenario.

‘Digital transformation’ entails ‘radical rethinking’ and ‘re-strategizing’ concerning deploying technology for usable, accessible experiences and better outreach to a wide base of customers for your product and services. It also refers to the usage of the ‘convergence of multiple applications into a connected experience’ to disrupt business processes for providing ‘enhanced and sustainable access’ to services for all.  All this & more, at the click of a button from the comfort of one’s home, office or on the go.

Widespread usage of mobile has impacted our lives & habits in a major way, as it connects you to everything, through the internet.  This makes world standing at the cusp of ‘digital transformation’ as almost 4.66 billion people were active internet users as of October 2020, encompassing 59 per cent of the global population. So now, the time is ripe for a caterpillar to become a beautiful butterfly.

Digital transformation is making in-roads across sectors right from agriculture, retail, insurance, banking or health care. The year 2020, with the onslaught of Covid 19, increased onus on health care sector world over.

Global healthcare spending could reach over $10 trillion by 2022. The U.S. has the greatest healthcare spending at $10,224 per capita. The built-up to this scenario is rising costs, patient demographics, evolving consumer expectations and expanding markets world over. Hence, the sector needs to work on advanced digital technologies, data analytics and value-based care to build a conducive healthcare ecosystem.

These trends drive adoption of telemedicine for increased access to healthcare services for remote diagnosis, monitoring and education. M-health is the most important part of digital healthcare as 68% of doctors in emerging markets recommend m-health and 59% of patients are already using it. Mobile apps, are connecting doctors to patients and enabling remote consultations.

The remote diagnosis provides access to healthcare for remote populations by providing point-of-care diagnostics, teleconsultation and e-prescription capabilities. Digital and social connectivity help build patient support communities and knowledge portals on the patient side. It has given rise to digital chatter platforms where medical professionals share knowledge and seek advice. 

Patient engagement:This will support patient engagement on trials for better retention, medication adherence, communication, consent, training and scheduling.

With this increased strain to global healthcare technology innovations like contact tracing, virtual assistants, automated temperature screening, machine learning assisted diagnosis and ICU robotics are transforming digital lead care.

Electronic medical records (EMR) cover health information systems and cloud computing to increase remote and ubiquitous access to patient data. Wearables, initially used for selecting diet and monitor exercises, now, wearables are being used to measure basic health parameters like heart rate. Big data analytics is a great tool forcombining consumer insights and internal data to inform and optimise their product offerings and services.

‘Digital ways’ in health care systems are important to link digital offerings to a much sought-after customer experience and providing a 360-degree view of the patients, hence doing away with operational constraints and curtailing costs too!

Thus, leading to a win-win situation for all stakeholders.