Unleashing Healthcare's Potential: Exploring Digitized Service Wrappers

Introduction:

In this edition of Healthcare's Data Innovations newsletter, we delve into the fascinating world of digital service wrappers for physical products, and how this process born from manufacturing and physical goods is at the center of every healthcare digital transformation effort.

Digitized service wrappers are a transformative trend that is reshaping the healthcare landscape. These innovative solutions combine data and software to enable seamless access to healthcare services through digital front doors, remote patient care, and personalized medicine by leveraging the power of data and technology to enhance everything from patient and physician experience to clinical care outcomes.

What Do Digital Service Wrappers Enable?

Digital service wrappers combine typically disparate data sources, including EMR, IoT/streaming device data, and other internal and external data sources with well-designed software interfaces to act as transformative bridges that connect the physical and digital worlds of healthcare. They empower healthcare organizations to extend their services and improve the quality of those services, beyond traditional clinical care settings and provide the next generation of patient access and care.

From remote consultations and telehealth services to personalized health monitoring and virtual care, service wrappers unlock new possibilities for enhancing patient care and convenience. Digital service wrappers must extend beyond the specialty care patient vertical as the opportunity is too great to engage the general care population and potentially refocus efforts on turning around the “inverted triangle” of care in the United States.

What are the trends?

The healthcare industry is witnessing a surge in digitized adoption. Telemedicine and remote monitoring have become integral components of modern healthcare delivery and those changes are reflected in increased services payments to providers. However, how integrated are these solutions largely the product of intense pandemic driven efforts? It's more than fair to assign accolades for the impressive efforts of our healthcare system to find digital answers during COVID while admitting that these efforts require significant integration and improvement.

Healthcare organizations are embracing wearable devices, smart medical devices, and mobile health apps to provide patients with continuous access to care, even beyond the clinical setting. This trend is driven by the growing demand for personalized and on-demand healthcare services. Integration and interoperability still plague our healthcare system here in the United States, but if analysts are correct that healthcare data rights and ownership will see increased regulation from the perspective of direct patient access, we can expect more positive momentum.

What role does data play?

Data plays a pivotal role in the success of service wrappers for physical products. These digital solutions rely on two key components:

1. Well-designed journeys that are not scared of complete process reengineering efforts.
2. Thoughtful data democratization and interoperability ecosystems powered by platform level data solutions.

Data from wearable devices, IoT sensors, and patient health records provide real-time insights and personalized care plans. Data analytics and AI-driven algorithms have enabled healthcare providers to make informed decisions for decades. However, the continued downward pressure on computing costs and cognitive services have made them more attainable than ever to implement at scale.

Personalized medicine is on the cusp of mainstream adoption with Academic Medical Centers and Learning Hospital Systems leading the charge. These systems are institutionalizing prediction automation and offering AI co-pilots to human judgement as part of care delivery operations for predicting health risks including sepsis, falls, and mortality upon admission and proactively offering intervention suggestions to prevent adverse outcomes. The secure and efficient exchange of data between patients, providers, and devices forms the foundation of these transformative solutions.

What is the Next Generation of Healthcare Digital Front Doors?

The concept of "Digital Front Door" has gained prominence with the rise of service wrappers (my first exposure to the term was in Marx and Padmanabhan’s 2020 book: Healthcare Digital Transformation: How Consumerism, Technology and Pandemic are Accelerating the Future).

The Digital Front Door represents a patient-centric approach, providing individuals with a single, digital entry point to access various healthcare services and resources. Patients can schedule appointments, receive virtual consultations, access health information, and manage their health journey seamlessly through a user-friendly and intuitive digital platform. The unification of physical and digital worlds through thoughtful data collection/integration and software design is a challenge, but one that patients and providers are relying on healthcare systems to get right.

Conclusion:

Digital service wrappers represent a paradigm shift in healthcare, unlocking new dimensions of patient-centered care, access to services, and provider support. With data-driven insights and software driven user enablement, healthcare organizations can redefine the patient experience and elevate the quality of care. By embracing the Digital Front Door and journeying into the realm of service wrappers, we are poised to revolutionize healthcare delivery and enhance patient outcomes in the digital age.