A Healthcare Digitization Framework: 5 Strategies

A Healthcare Digitization Framework:
5 Strategies

© 2020 Health Catalyst
Proprietary. Feel free to share but we would appreciate a Health Catalyst citation.
Healthcare Digitization
From planning travel to buying
groceries, today’s consumers are
making more transactions digitally.
Yet, as consumer-oriented industries
overall turn to mobile-first, cloud-
based platforms as their primary, and
sometimes only, means of consumer
interaction and engagement,
healthcare lags behind.

Healthcare digitization remains EHR
centric and relies on a vendor
approach to apps, resulting in a
fragmented experience, poor data
integration, and non-intuitive tools
that too often fail to drive informed
decisions or customer value.

This digital lag puts healthcare at risk in
an evolving consumer landscape in which
digitization increasingly drives success
and failure.
It’s now imperative that healthcare catches
up with digital consumer-oriented trends
and expectations.

Even brands with business models that predate
digitization, such as Delta Air Lines, have had to
disrupt themselves and transform to consumer
self-service models to stay relevant as
digitization steadily gains influence
over consumer experience and loyalty.

Getting on the Modern Digital Playing Field
with a Healthcare Digitization Framework
To get on the modern digital playing field, healthcare
organizations can follow a basic digital transformation
roadmap and customize it to serve each health system’s
unique and complex needs.
With an effective digital framework,
providers and the right vendor partners
fully integrate data, technology, and
reimagined workflows.
Health systems address optimal user
experience while providing virtual access
to all relevant information in an interactive,
self-service environment that’s always
available, from any device.

For effective transformation, a healthcare digitization
framework supports four central goals:
1. Engaging healthcare consumers
2. Enabling the care team
3. Improving clinical and operational outcomes
4. Growing the organization

Engaging healthcare consumers
A digital strategy must engage healthcare
consumers in their overall health and wellness.
This includes providing an engaging self-
service experience and giving consumers
full access to the necessary data and
services to promote healing, health,
wellness, and brand loyalty.

Enabling the care team
Digitization must enable care teams to effectively collaborate
and provide excellent care.
Doing so means connecting care team members
with patients and family members to enhance
patient safety, productivity, and working
together more efficiently.

Improving clinical and operational outcomes
To facilitate optimized and cost-effective
care, digital tools leverage data and
analytics to create embedded insights
and decision support, thereby improving
business and clinical outcomes at the
frontline and health and wellness for
entire populations.

Growing the organization
A digital strategy supports partnerships, organic
growth, diversification, and innovation, allowing
organizations to harness the power of strategic
partner-ships, platforms, tools, and data to
keep pace with rapidly changing business
needs.

Rethinking Investment in Technology for
Effective, Sustainable Digitization
Meeting the goals of the digitization
framework requires health systems to
rethink how they invest in technology.
Current healthcare technology spending
models can allocate up to 90 percent of
their non-labor costs to maintaining and
supporting systems of record; these
models need to evolve to allow strategic
growth in consumer-facing areas (e.g.,
mobile, voice, chatbot, and virtual reality).

An effective system of record investment,
that supports consumer-centric digitization,
should more optimally be managed around
65 percent (Figure 1).
To support this 65 percent systems-of-
record investment goal, organizations must
adopt an overall buy-versus-build strategy
based on strategic partnerships and an
investment strategy based on having fewer,
but fully integrated, systems of record as
the foundation.

Figure 1: The technology investment framework.
Technology Investment Framework

Then, working up the framework, health
systems identify opportunities to differentiate
and maintain leadership, maintaining an
approach to innovate “around the edges”
rather than building or customizing the
foundational systems.
The technology investment framework in
Figure 1 shows how organizations can save
money at the lower level (systems of record)
to allow for investment at the center and top of
the pyramid—the systems of differentiation and
innovation, which will generate opportunities
where consumers will engage directly.

Furthermore, technology lifecycles align with
the above investment framework as longer
lifecycles at the bottom of the framework
correspond with heavier, capital intensive
investments.
The middle of the framework focuses more
around SaaS-enabled cloud solutions in a
subscription-based model.
The top of the framework follows a very short
lifecycle, allowing organizations to rapidly test
which consumer-oriented tools and services
are effective and continually update those tools
to meet rapidly evolving innovation cycles.

The Roadmap to Digitization:
A Digital Enablement Framework
Once health systems have redefined their
technology investment framework, they need a
roadmap for digital transformation.
A digital enablement framework (Figure 2)
layers systems of differentiation and innovation
on top of other data sources, systems of
record, and internet of things (sensors,
monitors, consumer devices, etc.), which all
rests on the IT infrastructure layer (cloud,
networking, directories, data centers, etc.)

Digital Enablement Framework
Figure 2: The digital enablement framework.

This framework allows organizations to make
conscientious decisions about systems of
differentiation and innovation at the top layers,
as well at the data platform layer (e.g., the
Health Catalyst® Data Operating System
[DOS™]) to support digital process and
application interface layers.
This allows organizations to build fully
integrated, consumer-centric digital
interactions based on consumer perspectives,
rather than just offering consumers a myriad of
non-integrated, vendor-specific digital tools
lacking cohesiveness.

Four Strategies to Enable Digital Transformation
Following the establishment of the digital investment
and enablement frameworks, organizations can start
their digital transformation.
A holistic approach supports digitization from the
ground up with four strategies that guide stable,
scalable transformation:
1. Formally Define “Digital” for the Organization
2. Divide Technology into Appropriate Portfolios
3. Develop an Analogy for the Integrated Portfolio
Approach
4. Strategically Select Vendor Partners

Formally Define “Digital” for the Organization
An effective definition of digital includes
the innovative meshing of new
technologies, data intelligence, re-
imagined workflows, and organizational
leadership—all aligned to achieve a
“sticky” and optimal experience that invites
end users to virtually access all relevant
information while offering a breadth of
interactive self-service capabilities.

Divide Technology into Appropriate Portfolios
Health systems create 10 portfolio areas (Figure
3) for laser focus around strategy for each area,
all governed to support end digitization goals.
Build business-driven IT partnerships for each
portfolio and each major IT investment with a
clinical or business sponsor/champion, who is
the face of the initiative, paired with IT champion
who’s doing the bulk of work behind the scenes.
The partnership allows for two “harmonized”
voices on the leadership team and ensures IT
and business goals are connected.

Divide Technology into Appropriate Portfolios
Figure 3: 10 technology portfolio areas.

Develop an Analogy for the Integrated Portfolio Approach
An analogy can make the integrated portfolio
approach above more understandable to leadership.
One possible approach, as shown in Figure 4, uses a
solar system to represent the relationships between
the primary vendor partner for a given portfolio (the
sun), secondary vendors (e.g., fully integrated
partners of the primary partner), and non-strategic
vendors (e.g., interfaced vendors) in its orbit.

Figure 4: The integrated portfolio approach.

This “best of suite” approach by portfolio
results in far fewer vendors with much higher
levels of integration, which both supports
reducing systems of record costs while
providing significantly higher levels of
integrated capabilities and access to data—
key enablers of the digital framework.

Other service industries have set a
standard for digitization that comprises
key attributes, including mobile-first
and cloud-based platforms, a cohesive
and brand-driven (versus vendor-
driven) user experience, and analytics-
driven personalization of the digital
experience while delivering substantial
consumer value.

As consumers increasingly interact
according to these standards and base
brand choice and loyalty on the quality
of their digital interactions, healthcare
must adopt the digital priorities and
expectations that increasingly define
consumer-oriented industries.
Retail, travel, food service brands, and
more have defined the modern digital
playing field and given healthcare the
roadmap it needs to join them.

For more information:
“This book is a fantastic piece of work”
– Robert Lindeman MD, FAAP, Chief Physician Quality Officer

More about this topic
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
A Healthcare Digitization Framework: 5 Strategies
Platforms and Partnerships: The Building Block for Digital Innovation
Ryan Smith, MBA, SVP and Executive Advisor
Unleashing Patient’s Power in Improving Health and Care
Maureen Bisognano, President Emerita and Senior Fellow, IHI
The Missing Ingredient in Healthcare Analytics: The Executive Sponsor
Ryan Smith, MBA, SVP and Executive Advisor
Agnostic Analytics Solutions vs. EHRs: Six Reasons EHRs Can’t Deliver True Healthcare Interoperability
Ryan Smith, MBA, SVP and Executive Advisor; Mark McCourt; Mike Noke, MBA; Neil Andersen
The Top Five Recommendations for Improving the Patient Experience
Anne Marie Bickmore, SVP, Company Operations; Kathleen Merkley, DNP, APRN, FNP, SVP of Professional Services

Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Ryan Smith, MBA, is a recognized healthcare IT executive and leader for aligning business and
technology strategies. His focus is on establishing strong relationships with business and clinical
leaders throughout the organization and across the industry. He understands how to effectively bring
key leaders into the strategic planning process and encourage collaboration and cooperation across
divisions and operating units. He fosters business understanding of the value that information
technology presents in achieving superior customer satisfaction, driving bottom line efficiencies, and
enhancing the operations of health care organizations. He is often sought out by health care systems
nationally to help them understand the role that IT plays in improving the value of organizations to their internal and
external constituencies. Ryan has 20+ years of experience as a results-oriented leader with strong business and
technology delivery, and execution experience. He is a hands-on leader who understands the CEO vision and how to
make it work throughout an organization. He has an exceptional ability to understand and communicate technology to
the “C” suite in health care organizations. He has played a key role in defining strategic initiatives for improving
physician relationships through innovative IT services. He has served in multiple technical and business leadership
roles, with experience spanning strategic planning, organizational alignment, focus on best practices, online services,
IT operations and infrastructure, information security, and clinical information systems. His strength is in defining and
aligning business and technology strategy. Specialties: Senior technology and executive business management skills,
business strategy, consumer digital strategy, data management and analytics, online services, healthcare IT,
architecture, product development, and IT operations management.
Ryan Smith, MBA

Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Health Catalyst is a mission-driven data warehousing, analytics and outcomes-improvement
company that helps healthcare organizations of all sizes improve clinical, financial, and operational
outcomes needed to improve population health and accountable care. Our proven enterprise data
warehouse (EDW) and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in
support of more than 65 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system
to forward-thinking physician practices.
Health Catalyst was recently named as the leader in the enterprise healthcare BI market in
improvement by KLAS, and has received numerous best-place-to work awards including Modern
Healthcare in 2013, 2014, and 2015, as well as other recognitions such as “Best Place to work for
Millenials, and a “Best Perks for Women.”

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