This is the sixth entry in a series of blogs for ePharma Summit 2016 to explore ways the pharmaceutical industry can maximize the promise of digital health.
How many times have you heard the term “silo” in reference to your organization? I’m going to bet your answer is: More than once. No matter whether your organization is hanging on to its outdated org chart or not, those days are in the rearview mirror. The walls are coming down not just inside your organization. They are coming down among industry sectors and geographic areas, as well.
The interconnectivity and connection among healthcare payers, providers, industry and patients are organic. Simply, individuals are hyperconnected, and so the environments where they live, work, play and heal are, by extension, hyperconnected, too.
What Hyperconnectivity Means to Health Care
- Within Provider Organizations: Work groups and teams throughout an organization can literally always be on the same page, because that page is electronic. Ideally, entries and updates in documentation of all types are instantaneous across teams and within them. For patient care, providers are working off the latest information across the organization whether that information is clinical or claims related. We aren’t there yet, but we can see it from here.
- Among Provider Organizations: When interoperability is in place, providers will be working off the latest information across health systems, across the country and eventually around the world. We aren’t there yet, either. The barriers will be more regulatory and legal than technological, but it’s possible.
- Outside Provider Organizations: Patients and the industries that support them are rapidly becoming integrated into provider health systems via their digital imprint. Eventually, when the walls come down and the proper security is in place, patient connectivity to their record through their biometric device(s) provides real time feedback and recommendations to maintain wellness and manage illness. Industries that support the health system, including biopharmaceuticals, are beginning to understand and develop ways to leverage the connectivity advantage and provide support to providers and patients as 24/7 patient management approaches.
The pace of change is exponential. Just because it took us 30 years to get here from the birth of the Internet, does not mean change will continue at that pace. The mere fact of hyperconnectivity accelerates progress at a mind-boggling rate. If you can imagine it, it is happening somewhere already.
Sales, marketing, product research and development, patient care, provider access to patient and clinical information and payment systems are mutually supportive in a hyperconnected environment. When the health system is integrated into the fabric of an individual’s daily life and into the fabric of society, it erodes silos that interfere with optimal care.
The harbingers are already in place.
