The role of digital in transforming the patient experience in healthcare

The resilience of the Australian healthcare system has been tested to levels not seen before in the past two and a half years. Wave after wave of COVID-19 outbreaks, a rise in influenza due to compromised immunity and disruptions to elective and even essential surgery have created fatigue and anxiety.

It’s a testament to the positivity of the sector that even in the face of these compounding issues the focus remains on how to provide an excellent patient experience. The role of digital technologies in improving the clinical and non-clinical experience is increasingly coming into sharper focus, with the opportunities for 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, precision medicine, 3D printing, augmented and virtual reality, genomics and video technologies now being sought to be more clearly understood

New technologies are also changing consumer expectations of the healthcare system and providers. An increasing number of today’s patients are demanding healthcare services to be delivered with greater efficiency and in convenient, comfortable, near-normal settings. 

Improving the patient experience

Optus Enterprise and Business hosted a roundtable event with health professionals focused on technology’s role in improving the patient experience. The event was anchored by an independent survey and research report commissioned by Optus Enterprise and Business and Cisco with Vector Consulting.

It found that almost half of all health professionals nominated delivering better health (clinical) outcomes as the major driver of patient experience. This acknowledged that delivering a quality experience is not simply about ‘delighting’ the patient; it’s primarily measured against the impact on recovery. Other factors such as improving patient satisfaction and delivering cost savings – are secondary considerations.

The survey found that most healthcare services were focused on three areas when it came to improving the patient experience:

1.     Creating a digital front door including e-concierge and triage

2.     Virtualised and hybrid care

3.     Digitised patient services in acute settings.

Future digital patient experience services will increasingly rely on high-speed connectivity that supports bandwidth-intensive applications. Security, scalability and resilience are seen as critical to protect patient and staff data and preserve business continuity.

Choosing the right collaboration platforms

Digital transformation in healthcare increasingly requires highly agile networks that can cater for unforeseen demand, rapidly changing patient expectations and the creation of new business models. Channel choice is becoming the preferred model and needs to be supported as part of the digital architecture. The choice of collaboration platforms is also critical with clear non-negotiables; scalability, simplicity, security, immersiveness, integration into clinical workflows and data protection.

Healthcare services continue to add applications, workflows, systems and infrastructure to improve patient experience and broader goals. A major challenge is ensuring that these discrete components form an end-to-end service and experience, not a series of disparate technologies that staff and patients need to navigate.

Providers need to actively remove complexity from the management and delivery of IT, including managing hand-offs between suppliers, whilst driving maximum cost savings and efficiency, and streamlining integration. The need for a capable integrator of disparate technologies and platforms has never been greater.

A consistent theme during the roundtable was the value of having trusted partnerships. This is partly due to what’s at risk if it’s not done right – including the risk of data breaches – but also a reflection of the pace of change and fact that traditional customer-supplier relationships will only get you so far.

Find out more

To learn more digital strategies around transforming patient experience and opportunities in the Australian Healthcare sector download the new whitepaper below. 

This whitepaper is the second release in a four-part series. Read and download the first whitepaper, released earlier this year, on virtualised care opportunities in the Australian Healthcare system here.