Feb 1
2021
Turning Healthcare Challenges Into Healthcare Opportunities
By Tara Mahoney, head of healthcare practice, Avaya.
COVID-19 has forever changed the U.S. healthcare system with the acceleration of digital transformation and remote collaboration. As 2020 past us now, we’re getting a clearer picture of what post-pandemic healthcare in the U.S. will look like (or rather, require). Based on my industry background at Avaya, here are four predictions as we continue into 2021:
Prediction #1: Telehealth is here to stay and it’s forcing us to reimagine current care models. It must and will evolve.
The pandemic thrusted organizations into the inevitable telehealth revolution, but it’s not likely COVID-19 will push the timetable forward as much as some claim. Telehealth is about much more than “just” video-based physician visits. It will evolve to cover many workflows where patients and care teams cannot be together, including virtual rounding, remote patient monitoring, bedside consultation. It’s about being able to seamlessly coordinate across the entire health organization in a way that positively impacts key measures of clinical quality – all while addressing information security concerns and abiding by HIPAA regulations.
It’s about the use of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) for collecting important healthcare data in real-time to enable proactive, remote care delivery. It’s about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics to make critical predictions about patient diagnoses, treatment side effects, staffing, and expenses. It’s a complex journey, only made more complex by historically slow-to-change industry policies.
Health systems pulled together in 2020, but that’s not enough for sustainable digital transformation. Organizations will take their time navigating the complexities of digitization and remote collaboration as they embrace a new future of operations and patient care. We will see current care models change, albeit incrementally.