Why I launched a startup?
My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer a few years back. Standing by her through 3 major surgeries, then getting her stabilized, building a recovery plan through 4 rounds of chemo (1 centered explicitly around a clinical trial) gave me first-hand exposure to glaring gaps and critical needs that exist within our healthcare system. These gaps were not unique. I saw similar needs exist within other chronic illness areas leading me to seek answers so others would not face the same challenges.
Begin with the Patient!
Despite the medical community (Payers, Providers, and LifeScience firms, Policy Makers and Regulators) claim and strive to deliver a more "patient-centered" healthcare system, I found patient centricity to be fractured and disconnected. Without patients having a standardized approach, process, or protocols to guide them, patients and their families experience more pain to an already painful experience. We must address this properly and not consider it as a bolt-on solution to existing activity. To confront this issue, we have to begin by first plotting a patient’s journey and learn what interactions are being conducted at each stage. Understanding their journeys and mapping opportunities into an applicable framework is key (see framework below). Only then can we begin building a continuum of desired experiences in each area, evaluate the providers, monitor the progress of each individual along the path, trigger personalized information for actions to guide them along, and begin to create repeatable formulas for an expected experience at scale.
Patient Centricity Framework
Why Interactions Matter
Within healthcare, building trust and having a face-to-face engagement with a patient are integral components of any health service. It has clearly been proven that engaged patients can make better decisions about their care options, reduce overall healthcare costs and become the greatest healthcare advocate for the services they received.
With the proliferation of new technologies and a war for tech supremacy, healthcare companies are moving and marketing themselves as technology innovation leaders. Smart and Connected Devices, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Storage, Augmented Reality (AR), and Autonomous Systems are buzz words being thrown around within every technology conversation these days without a clear understanding of the depth required in their everyday use. Existing tools that could easily be leveraged from the retail industry and inserted to strengthen already established and familiar relationships are superficially considered. Instead, a clear focus is on cost efficiency - asset optimization, streamlining, automation, and technologies' scalability to drive down costs. Most do not seem to be focusing on the significant human interactions that are critical dependencies and play a crucial role in our patient's recovery journey.
Have we already identified and mastered these patient interactions? Does it not require our continuous and utmost attention?
CARE Hospital - Banjara Hills
CARE Hospital - HITECH City
Connecting Conversations with Technologies
In an age where data and sensors are more prevalent than ever, we can capture a patient’s profile attributes, location and activity-related details, we sorely lack meaningful interactions that play a key role in patient’s recovery. As more technology gets introduced and gets stitched together with existing technology layers, the emphasis is always on the efficiency of the transaction. The human side of technology quickly gets lost. Understanding human engagement can make technology a more impactful tool for healthcare.
Use Technology to Help Patients Visualize and Understand
Due to the advent of the internet and mobile technology, patients have unprecedented access to their own information and monitoring devices making it possible to collect personal health data. Introducing visualization tools makes the information more valuable to patients. Promoting stronger interactions, engagements, and discussions resulting in better patient satisfaction.
Go Beyond the Circle of Influence
In the past, the healthcare system was limited to hospitals and medical facilities. Most of the tasks in the healthcare industry were geared towards treating problems after they occurred. Why not bring existing social technologies to prevent more diseases and help with more chronic conditions. Educating patients and their family members about various aspects of the disease can significantly improve the quality of care. Patients and family members can monitor conditions in real-time and ask the professionals to help during high-risk situations. Technologies can help expand the circle of influence and empower the patients to take care of themselves better.
Create Value Through Communication
Today mobile communication makes it possible for physicians and patients to share information instantly. Open communication channels can improve the quality of care because it’s easier for patients to ask for help from their doctors. However communication through technology can take many forms, i.e. emotions can get lost in emoticons and emojis. Hospitals and healthcare centers need to use electronic communication channels for interactions with their patients but empathy training becomes more important. Through such training, physicians and nurses can learn to listen to their patients and have more fruitful medical interactions. Understanding what patients think and expect about treatments can influence their health outcomes.
Technology has a tendency to create detachment, at UrHealth.ai we believe it is important to define these quantifiable interactions and measurements. Paying attention to the importance of human interactions can make technology a more powerful tool for the healthcare industry.
Strategic Transformations
We need to redefine our approach to today's empowered customers who expect much more from their businesses these days. This does not equate to just pricing or personalized and tailored selection, but also to a connected experience with easy access to information when they want it. Meeting this expectation brings significant challenges for organizations. From long-standing operating models, re-engineering business processes and adopting a culture that has a mindset to put customer experience at the heart of decision-making, this requires significant restructuring across for all businesses.
A strong customer engagement focus of an interdisciplinary team would seem ideal. So why aren’t enterprises answering it faster using the latest technologies available? Addressing the re-balance of your enterprise capital and operational investments and aligning teams to this strategy is the primary challenge for your executive leadership. Your enterprise data center costs are one such challenge. This technology line item occupies approximately one-third of your technology resources. Off-setting these capital resources so your team is not focused on just "Keeping the lights ON", they are actively focused on helping to update their house. This desire is shared by many, including technology leaders. However, they lack guidance on how to approach and execute this transition. Our m2cloud product attempted to do just that, cataloging data center assets and guiding teams through this process.
Identify what assets are suitable for transitioning to cloud
Recognize the inter-dependencies involved and the teams impacted
Calculating financial guidance to assist in prioritizing your focus
Mapping out your activities
Strategic Operations
Being able to evaluate our customer's needs we were able to fulfill and exceed their expectations with our internal capabilities. Allowing me to scale accounts and also provide the motivation for our teams onsite and remote for growth.
