• by Elizabeth H. Elfenbein , Columnist, June 21, 2018

The world of healthcare has changed profoundly. With technology and media companies disrupting every stage of the patient’s health journey, the paradigm of care has finally shifted. 

So, what does this mean for the healthcare community? For starters, it means that once patients and physicians get to the treatment part of the journey, they will have access to more technology solutions and resources than ever before. This will not only make the experience with health more efficient, it will provide a new level of treatment beyond surgery and pill. 

Making the treatment journey more intuitive

New technologies have the power to serve up engaging patient-friendly experiences, which will help empower each stage of the journey. And big tech has collective connected consumer technologies experience, with a ubiquitous foundation that they can build on to activate this. The biggest challenge they’ll have will be applying the complex regulated healthcare filter and figuring out where they can simplify the experience for various customers. 

The treatment journey and the opportunity 

Once a consumer becomes a patient, how they’re treated physically, emotionally and holistically makes all the difference in a successful recovery and in managing their chronic condition. Technology can enable a better, more empathetic experience offering intuitive solutions that not only understand where the patient is with their treatment, but also what their needs are at every point of treatment.

Treatment is in the treatment

Motivating patients requires excellent care along with technology that helps to solve a problem and deliver a better experience. Google with “Glassware” provides enormous benefits in healthcare, particularly for disabled users. Google Glass could aid visually impaired users by telling them what they’re holding, or maybe even reading a letter. The hearing-impaired may eventually see a descriptive commentary shown on Google Glass. Users with autism might be able to discover the emotions people are feeling due to Glass analyzing their facial expressions. And the hands-free capabilities have clear benefits for those with mobility issues. Google Glass is enabling widespread adoption of augmented reality and a new lens in which to see things. 

Comcast and Independence Health are bringing a consumer healthcare technology platform to market with the potential to disrupt the entire healthcare journey. This new joint venture will focus first on digitizing the patient experience during treatment as well as in aftercare. Imagine the opportunity to help each phase of the treatment part of journey — going in for surgery and coming out of the hospital with a virtual plan to treat until a patient is recovered. And they have plans to create an open platform, hoping to inspire Amazon or other tech companies to add in services or new features. 

Amazon is partnering with Berkshire Hathaway and Chase to focus on delivering less expensive, better care to more than one million employees and their dependents within their respective companies. They’re rumored to be working on a telemedicine platform, offering virtual care to their employees. This kind of care will be so helpful at the treatment stage because it will allow an employee to have a 30-minute virtual consult while at work, which in turn helps build recovery and health momentum.

Empathy is in the “how we treat”

These big tech companies have enormous power to upend how patients are treated, literally and figuratively. And the after-effects are massive for the whole healthcare community. It’s not only providing empathy for all of the customers, it’s providing empathy for the economic burden, which gets reduced because of the natural efficiencies that technology provides.