HEALTH CARE

HEALTH CARE
Healthcare is a complex system that works much like human biology. It is vast, difficult to
change, and designed to survive and evolve. Unlike a biological system, however, it's artificial
and can be changed relatively quickly when there's a compelling reason to do so.
Over the next decade healthcare will look very different from the way it's looked for the last 30
years. Changing market forces, rising consumer demands, and technology -- particularly
digitization -- will create a radical shift in how and where healthcare services are delivered.
As thousands of health IT professionals gather later this month at the annual HIMSS conference,
a key theme will be the convergence of patient data, digital technology, and analytics, which is
enabling emerging opportunities such as location-independent care and social platforms.
Location-independent healthcare
Thanks to recent advances in technology, many services once available only in hospitals can be
delivered nearly anywhere, as long as the required care and business models are supported.
Research on the "hospital at home" concept demonstrated that over 20 years ago.
[How can healthcare IT combat medical identity theft? Read HIMSS Security Survey:
Greatest Threat From Healthcare Insiders.]
Most of the work involved to achieve a positive health outcome occurs outside the walls of a
physician's office. Consider diabetes, for example. It is one of the highest-cost diseases to
manage in both developed and developing health systems. The best way to improve outcomes is
often through the things a patient does to self-manage a condition outside the physician's office.
However, patient records usually don't reflect these day-to-day details as they occur outside the
physician's office.
Some providers are already combining virtual health services with consumer platforms such as
video technologies, and this trend continues to gain acceptance worldwide. For example,
Accenture has helped the Basque Country in Spain deploy a telehealth platform that enables
patients to access health services using an Xbox Kinect console. In its first year, research shows
the program has eliminated 52,000 hospital visits and achieved a 7% cost reduction per patient.
Other emerging solutions, such as clinical triage tools, can analyze patient information remotely
and determine whether a medical condition warrants an online visit in which a physician can
diagnose the problem, recommend treatment, and send a prescription immediately to the patient's
pharmacy.
Virtual health technologies offer patients greater convenience by providing timely access to care
at home, in the workplace, or virtually anywhere.
Crowdsourcing: enabling new data sources for population management
When a group of individuals on Patients Like Me self-organized a clinical trial and discovered
that a common off-label use of a drug did not improve complications of Lou Gehrig's Disease
(ALS), they proved that a relatively dangerous drug did not really work as intended, and the
therapy was discontinued. Such patient-led clinical trials make a compelling case for using
crowdsourcing as a tool to identify real-time insights on patient care. The next wave of
healthcare will also center on collecting new information such as patient-reported outcomes and
behavioral data to identify patterns that contribute to the onset of a disease. Just a few years ago,
such patient-assembled data was often discarded as untrusted or "noisy" due to quality concerns.
Social data enables individuals to identify and measure key behavioral and social trends that can
contribute to more positive outcomes. Like patient-provided data in the past, social data seems to
be the new "noise" in healthcare. But it can become more valuable and relevant over time,
especially from a population health perspective. For example, diseases such as multiple sclerosis
may not be treated with just a single-disease-modifying therapeutic, but rather with a dozen
different supporting therapies. Social data could help medical practitioners by enabling an
authentic lens on various issues, services, and activities that can enhance the overall
effectiveness of the care regimen.
While social platforms such as Patients Like Me or Big White Wall (UK) have enabled patients
to connect with others with similar health interests and conditions, crowdsourcing will emerge as
the next wave of this social data trend. For example, FluNearYou, a popular mobile app hosted
by the Boston Children's Hospital, has individuals nationwide answer a few short questions to
track influenza prevalence and symptoms in various geographic locations. Similarly, recognizing
the value of social data in population health management, the Center for Disease Control (CDC)
launched a competition for designing a model that uses social data to predict flu outbreaks.
Consumers clearly want to play a bigger role in their medical care, and evidence suggests
engaging them offers important benefits. Empowered patients are more informed and motivated
patients. What's more, healthcare providers who empower their patients are differentiating
themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace as the challenges of 21st century
healthcare -- aging populations, rising rates of chronic disease, and increasingly expensive
treatments -- intensify. By working with patients as co-managers of their health, leading
providers are forging a path toward better, more effective care.
Download Healthcare IT in the Obamacare Era, the I nformationWeek Healthcare digital
issue on the impact of new laws and regulations. Modern technology created the opportunity
to restructure the healthcare industry around accountable care organizations, but I T priorities
are also being driven by the shift.
Kaveh Safavi, M.D., J.D., is Accenture's health industry lead for North America. He oversees the
payer, provider, and public health offerings and is responsible for the health strategy, growth
initiatives, and market capabilities. Safavi joined Accenture from Cisco in 2011, ... View Full
Bio