Digital Healthcare
Article | November 29, 2023
A digital twin is a digital representation of a real-world entity or system. The implementation of a digital twin is a model that mirrors a unique physical object, process, organization, person or other abstraction. For healthcare providers, digital twins provide an abstraction of the healthcare ecosystem’s component characteristics and behaviors. These are used in combination with other real-time health system (RTHS) capabilities to provide real-time monitoring, process simulation for efficiency improvements, population health and long-term, cross-functional statistical analyses.
Digital twins have the potential to transform and accelerate decision making, reduce clinical risk, improve operational efficiencies and lower cost of care, resulting in better competitive advantage for HDOs. However, digital twins will only be as valuable as the quality of the data utilized to create them. The digital twin of a real-world entity is a method to create relevance for descriptive data about its modeled entity. How that digital twin is built and used can lead to better-informed care pathways and organizational decisions, but it can also lead clinicians and executives down a path of frustration if they get the source data wrong. The underlying systems that gather and process data are key to the success for digital twin creation. Get those systems right and digital twins can accelerate care delivery and operational efficiencies.
Twins in Healthcare Delivery
The fact is that HDOs have been using digital twins for years. Although rudimentary in function, digital representations of patients, workflow processes and hospital operations have already been applied by caregivers and administrators across the HDO. For example, a physician uses a digital medical record to develop a treatment plan for a patient. The information in the medical record (a rudimentary digital twin) along with the physician’s experience, training and education combine to provide a diagnostic or treatment plan. Any gaps in information must be compensated through additional data gathering, trial-and-error treatments, intuitive leaps informed through experience or simply guessing. The CIO’s task now is to remove as many of those gaps as possible using available technology to give the physician the greatest opportunity to return their patients to wellness in the most efficient possible manner.
Today, one way to close those gaps is to create the technology-based mechanisms to collect accurate data for the various decision contexts within the HDO. These contexts are numerous and include decisioning perspectives for every functional unit within the enterprise. The more accurate the data collected on a specific topic, the higher the value of the downstream digital twin to each decision maker (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Digital Twins Are Only as Good as Their Data Source
HDO CIOs and other leaders that base decisions on poor-quality digital twins increase organizational risk and potential patient care risk. Alternatively, high-quality digital twins will accelerate digital business and patient care effectiveness by providing decision makers the best information in the correct context, in the right moment and at the right place — hallmarks of the RTHS.
Benefits and Uses
Digital Twin Types in Healthcare Delivery
Current practices for digital twins take two basic forms: discrete digital twins and composite digital twins. Discrete digital twins are the type that most people think about when approaching the topic. These digital twins are one-dimensional, created from a single set or source of data. An MRI study of a lung, for example, is used to create a digital representation of a patient that can be used by trained analytics processes to detect the subtle image variations that indicate a cancerous tumor. The model of the patient’s lung is a discrete digital twin. There are numerous other examples of discrete digital twins across healthcare delivery, each example tied to data collection technologies for specific clinical diagnostic purposes. Some of these data sources include vitals monitors, imaging technologies for specific conditions, sensors for electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG). All these technologies deliver discrete data describing one (or very few) aspects of a patient’s condition.
Situational awareness is at the heart of HDO digital twins. They are the culmination of information gathered from IoT and other sources to create an informed, accurate digital model of the real-world healthcare organization. Situational awareness is the engine behind various “hospital of the future,” “digital hospital” and “smart patient room” initiatives. It is at the core of the RTHS.
Digital twins, when applied through the RTHS, positively impact these organizational areas (with associated technology examples — the technologies all use one or more types of digital twins to fulfill their capability):
Care delivery:
Clinical communication and collaboration
Next-generation nurse call
Alarms and notifications
Crisis/emergency management
Patient engagement:
Experiential wayfinding
Integrated patient room
Risks
Digital Twin Usability
Digital twin risk is tied directly to usability. Digital twin usability is another way of looking at the issue created by poor data quality or low data point counts used to create the twins. Decision making is a process that is reliant on inputs from relevant information sources combined with education, experience, risk assessment, defined requirements, criteria and opportunities to reach a plausible conclusion. There is a boundary or threshold that must be reached for each of these inputs before a person or system can derive a decision. When digital twins are used for one or many of these sources, the ability to cross these decision thresholds to create reasonable and actionable conclusions is tied to the accuracy of the twins (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Digital Twin Usability Thresholds
For example, the amount of information about a patient room required to decide if the space is too hot or cold is low (due to a single temperature reading from a wall-mounted thermostat). In addition, the accuracy or quality of that data can be low (that is, a few degrees off) and still be effective for deciding to raise or lower the room temperature. To decide if the chiller on the roof of that patient wing needs to be replaced, the decision maker needs much more information. That data may represent all thermostat readings in the wing over a long period of time with some level of verification on temperature accuracy. The data may also include energy load information over the same period consumed by the associated chiller.
If viewed in terms of a digital twin, the complexity level and accuracy level of the source data must pass an accuracy threshold that allows users to form accurate decisions. There are multiple thresholds for each digital twin — based on twin quality — whether that twin is a patient, a revenue cycle workflow or hospital wing. These thresholds create a limit of decision impact; the lower the twin quality the less important the available decision for the real-world entity the twin represents.
Trusting Digital Twins for HDOs
The concept of a limit of detail required to make certain decisions raises certain questions. First, “how does a decision maker know they have enough detail in their digital twin to take action based on what the model is describing about its real-world counterpart?” The answer lies in measurement and monitoring of specific aspects of a digital twin, whether it be a discrete twin, composite twin or organization twin.
Users must understand the inputs required for decisions and where twins will provide one or more of the components of that input. They need to examine the required decision criteria in order to reach the appropriate level of expected outcome from the decision itself. These feed into the measurements that users will have to monitor for each twin. These criteria will be unique to each twin. Composite twins will have unique measurements that may be independent from the underlying discrete twin measurement.
The monitoring of these key twin characteristics must be as current as the target twin’s data flow or update process. Digital twins that are updated once can have a single measurement to gauge its appropriateness for decisioning. A twin that is updated every second based on event stream data must be measured continuously.
This trap is the same for all digital twins regardless of context. The difference is in the potential impact. A facilities decision that leads to cooler-than-desired temperatures in the hallways pales in comparison to a faulty clinical diagnosis that leads to unnecessary testing or negative patient outcomes.
All it takes is a single instance of a digital twin used beyond its means with negative results for trust to disappear — erasing the significant investments in time and effort it took to create the twin. That is why it is imperative that twins be considered a technology product that requires constant process improvement. From the IoT edge where data is collected to the data ingestion and analytics processes that consume and mold the data to the digital twin creation routines, all must be under continuous pressure for improvement.
Recommendations
Include a Concise Digital Twin Vision Within the HDO Digital Transformation Strategy
Digital twins are one of the foundational constructs supporting digital transformation efforts by HDO CIOs. They are digital representations of the real-world entities targeted by organizations that benefit from the advances and efficiencies technologies bring to healthcare delivery. Those technology advances and efficiencies will only be delivered successfully if the underlying data and associated digital twins have the appropriate level of precision to sustain the transformation initiatives.
To ensure this attention to digital twin worthiness, it is imperative that HDO CIOs include a digital twin vision as part of their organization’s digital transformation strategy. Binding the two within the strategy will reinforce the important role digital twins play in achieving the desired outcomes with all participating stakeholders.
Building new capabilities — APIs, artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies enable the connections and automation that the platform provides.
Leveraging existing systems — Legacy systems that an HDO already owns can be adapted and connected to form part of its digital platform.
Applying the platform to the industry — Digital platforms must support specific use cases, and those use cases will reflect the needs of patients, employees and other consumers.
Create a Digital Twin Pilot Program
Like other advanced technology ideas, a digital twin program is best started as a simple project that can act as a starting point for maturity over time. Begin this by selecting a simple model of a patient, a department or other entity tied to a specific desired business or clinical outcome. The goal is to understand the challenges your organization will face when implementing digital twins.
The target for the digital twin should be discrete and easily managed. For example, a digital twin of a blood bank storage facility is a contained entity with a limited number of measurement points, such as temperature, humidity and door activity. The digital twin could be used to simulate the impact of door open time on temperature and humidity within the storage facility. The idea is to pick a project that allows your team to concentrate on data collection and twin creation processes rather than get tied up in specific details of the modeled object.
Begin by analyzing the underlying source data required to compose the digital twin, with the understanding that the usability of the twins is directly correlated to its data’s quality. Understand the full data pathway from the IoT devices through to where that data is stored. Think through the data collection type needed for the twin, is discrete data or real-time data required? How much data is needed to form the twin accurately? How accurate is the data generated by the IoT devices?
Create a simulation environment to exercise the digital twin through its paces against known operational variables. The twin’s value is tied to how the underlying data represents the response of the modeled entity against external input. Keep this simple to start with — concentrate on the IT mechanisms that create and execute the twin and the simulation environment.
Monitor and measure the performance of the digital twin. Use the virtuous cycle to create a constant improvement process for the sample twin. Experience gained through this simple project will create many lessons learned and best practices to follow for complex digital twins that will follow.
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Health Technology, Digital Healthcare
Article | September 8, 2023
As competition for patients intensifies, more hospitals and health systems are embracing a consolidated, single-bill approach for services rendered. Creating a single bill for the patient’s portion of inpatient or outpatient services can help eliminate confusion and reduce the ill will that frequently results when patients receive multiple invoices for a single care event. Yet incorporating anesthesia charges into a consolidated invoice is often problematic due to the unique nature of the anesthesia billing compliance.
Anesthesia Billing Service Hurdles
A few weeks ago, I met with the CEO of a 300-bed hospital. We discussed anesthesia billing, and he explained that his hospital traditionally outsourced this portion of its billing due to the more complex nature of anesthesia coding and the need to collect anesthesia minutes for billing. Unlike most inpatient services, anesthesia charges are not directly derived from CPT codes but instead utilize minutes and modifiers unique to the specialty.
That means coders must use a CPT crosswalk to account for ASA codes, base and time units, emergency- and physical-status monitors, split anesthesia units reflecting CRNA involvement, and other specialty-specific nuances. Most coders and hospital billing staff are not trained in these complexities, and hiring and retaining capable staff in today’s competitive market can be difficult. Moreover, many billing platforms are simply not equipped to incorporate all the variables necessary to produce an accurate anesthesia bill.
As a result, producing a consolidated patient bill that includes anesthesia is tricky. Yet leaving anesthesia off a single bill can undercut its value since, after facility and surgical charges, anesthesia often is one of the largest cost items patients incur. Fortunately, we at Change Healthcare know how to roll anesthesia charges into existing hospital billing systems to produce an accurate and timely single patient bill.
Helping to Reduce Costs
The benefits of consolidated billing extend beyond an improved patient experience. Producing just one bill reduces costs and repetition at both the front and back end of the revenue cycle management process. It can also ease staff burden when collecting on self-pay accounts, since there’s only one bill per patient. Finally, consolidated bills can help increase revenue by simplifying collections when patients present for follow-up care.
Here’s an example: When the patient comes back for post-surgery physical therapy, a hospital employee at the registration desk can remind them that they still owe $150 for anesthesia and ask if they’d like to take care of that now. In my experience, patients usually hand over their credit card and settle their bill on the spot when asked at the time of care about a balance due.
System-Agnostic Billing Across Hospital Platforms
Change Healthcare has a long history of providing full-service, outsourced anesthesia-billing services to hospital and health-system clients. Unlike most other billing vendors, we’ve developed what we call a system-agnostic approach. That means we’ll provide billing services on our proprietary system or on the hospital’s existing billing platform, regardless of type, to generate accurate anesthesia-billing results.
In practical terms, we’ll function as part of your billing team and use the same system your coders and billing staff rely on to generate anesthesia charges that can be included in a single patient bill.
System-agnostic billing also allows us to provide clients with custom anesthesia reporting that wouldn’t otherwise be available with an outsourced billing solution. This helps clients gain far greater visibility and insight into anesthesia-billing charges. And by incorporating our anesthesia coding and billing capabilities into your existing billing system, you’ll be spreading the platform’s fixed costs across a greater number of departments.
The bottom line? It’s not a heavy lift for us to virtually embed our trained anesthesia coders and billing professionals into your system. Our specialists will review your existing platform and provide, at no obligation, a return-on-investment analysis that can help you determine whether outsourcing anesthesia billing to capture claims on a single hospital bill makes sense for you.
We expect the answer will be yes. Not only will you enjoy greater system efficiencies, but you’ll be in a position to produce a single bill that truly reflects the entire episode of care.
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Health Technology, Digital Healthcare
Article | August 16, 2023
Worried about how to improve your healthcare sales? Wondering where to begin? Of course, these questions demand genuine consideration. Healthcare professionals are some of the most valuable and vital members of the societiy. And you will have to take care of their unique needs if you want to sell your products to them.
Over the years, selling in most of the industries has changed; the healthcare industry is no exception. The healthcare industry has been booming over the last decade. The boom has increased the necessity of managing patient care and innovating medicines exponentially. To cater to such rising needs, newer technologies are being adopted by the industry.
Flatiron Health, a well-known healthcare technology and service provider, is using data analytics to tackle cancer. They believe that the technology industry is essential to solve healthcare issues. This New York-based start-up uses its cloud-based software platform and big data to connect to various cancer centers across the country. The key asset of the company is its ability to use data analytics to make meaningful recommendations. The annual revenue of Flatiron Health is US$100-500 million. Yes! you read it right.
So, all you need is to have a smart healthcare sales and marketing strategy. Having an effective strategy will help you conquer the healthcare industry and increase your profit margin. One of the easy ways to increase your healthcare IT sales is to have a firm understanding of the ohospital's organizational structure Apart from that, you can analyze the organization by asking the following questions:
• How does this particular healthcare organization compare with its competitors in this
specific arena?
• What is their current position in the industry?
• What makes them stand out from their competitors?
• What makes them unique?
Just like the tips mentioned above, this article is all about tips and strategies to increase your healthcare sales leads. These tips will undoubtedly help you skyrocket your healthcare technology sales by reaching out to a wider audience.
Attract Your Target Audience with Content Marketing
Healthcare is always been trending on search engines through relevant keywords. People search for a related term like healthcare and wellness tips, local medical professionals and medical facilities, and jobs in healthcare.
• One in every 20 searches is related to healthcare
• 70% of visitors of hospital websites come from organic web search
• 77% of all online health queries begin with a search
So, using content marketing to attract audience is the best way to increase healthcare sales. Offering healthcare and wellness information through different online channels will help you improve your credibility and visibility. This step will strengthen the relationship between staff, patients, prospective employees, and the community and increase credibility. According to CMI B2B Content Marketing Report, 2019, 62% of B2B marketers said that they were more successful with content marketing than ever before.
The healthcare technology industry is technical, and it can be highly challeging when you sell the product directly to high-level executives or physicians. So, you must invest time to create compelling content like blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, etc. It will increase your healthcare sales as this content will establish your expertise. So, all you need to do is generate informative and appealing content to position your company as an authentic thought leader, which will help you land more healthcare sales.
Understand your Customer Better and Build Trust
You cannot imagine a society without healthcare professionals. Obviously, you will have to go out of your way to have a deep understanding of their requirements if you want to sell technology to them.
Requirements of each of your clients in the healthcare industry can vary. Hence a ‘one size fits all’ approach will not help when it comes to offering the best experience to every customer. Thus, it would help if you adapted to customer needs for successful healthcare sales. Furthermore, it is essential to realize that healthcare customers are different from other business professionals.
Don’t beat around the bush when you get a chance to talk to them. Directly give them information on what they are looking for, staying respectful and professional. This will help you grab attention and generate interest.. Be flexible despite the odds and do whatever possible to solve their problems.
Prioritize trust-building at all times. In any sales process, trust is a decisive factor, especially in healthcare sales. The reason for this is that if you are selling medical equipment, technologies, or pharmaceuticals, your clients are risking the well-being of their patients in your hands. So, to pull up the healthcare sales game, work on building up a strong relationship and trust with your clients.
Know the Buyer’s Organizational Chart
Unlike working with a small clinic with a single decision-maker, you need to deal with a purchasing department or a buying group when you sell to a big hospital. To ensure that you do not miss anybody, you may have to map out your client’s purchasing hierarchy and identify everyone in the hospital involved in the process. In the healthcare industry, every single client has a very different purchasing style.
You can obtain this information from your known contacts and network within the organization. Knowing the organizational chart of your clients will help you expand your influence with in he organization and boost your healthcare sales.
Focus on Your Client’s Customers
Even for most effective sales organizations, it is remarkably challenging to sell to a client-driven and continually emerging industry like healthcare. However, if you make it through this competitive industry, you will have endless opportunities to add to your profits through successful healthcare sales.
When dealing with a service-based industry, the best strategy is to serve your clients’ customers. Essentially, if you find a practical way to improve their experience, your clients will be happy and you can establish a long-lasting relation with them.
Whenever you deal with a client from the healthcare industry, remember to focus on the actual patients. This strategic line of thought can surely bring you more healthcare sales and increase your annual profit.
Get Started with Social Media Marketing
This is fairly obvious that, in the modern world, social media has become a part of the everyday. There is no easier way to increase your client numbers than to promote your product or service on a platform that everyone uses.
Facebook is the best social media platform. Mainly because senior people use it as they are likely to require medical assistance. A Facebook page is the best place for you to start with your social media advertising. It is an informational source that can increase the targeted traffic coming to your website.
Due to the easy availability of information online, medical professionals do not depend upon salespeople. Instead, they do online research before making a purchase decision. Social media marketing can help you increase healthcare sales and be on the top at all times.
Rapidly evolving regulatory forces, market dynamics, and consumer demands are constantly adding to the healthcare industry's complexity. Driving meaningful patient action and true engagement through your innovative sales and marketing solutions will increase your healthcare sales. This will also make you stand out from the rest of the pack, ending in a long-term relationship with all your customers.
Ace your healthcare sales with these strategies and tips. Reach out to us if you are looking for any assistance. We at Media 7 provide all the B2B healthcare sales and marketing solutions. We focus on bringing in potential clients to your business platforms, converting them, and making them your happy customers forever. To know more about us, visit: https://media7.com
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a healthcare marketing strategy?
Healthcare marketing strategy is usually an inbound marketing process. We bring forth all the resources that could bear against various threats and opportunities in a highly competitive healthcare business through the process.
Why is healthcare marketing important?
For the sustainable growth of the healthcare industry, healthcare marketing is very important and an integral part. Marketing of healthcare technologies and other new facilities in line with treatment is very important for the transformation of the industry.
What is healthcare sales?
The process of persuading healthcare clients and making them buy your products is healthcare sales. In the process, you will sell drugs, medicines, equipment, and technologies to healthcare clients.
How can healthcare professionals drive sales?
Focusing on your client’s customer is an innovative strategy for sales in healthcare. A healthcare professional is likely to buy your product if you prove that your product can make their patients' lives easier.
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Health Technology, AI
Article | July 18, 2023
Embracing the AI Revolution: Transforming Digital Healthcare Software through AI-Enhanced UX Testing
The wave of demographic change sweeping the United States presents an urgent call to action for healthcare providers. According to the US Census Bureau, adults over 65 will account for a quarter of the US population by 2060, signaling a drastic shift in healthcare delivery needs. More than half a million of this demographic will be centenarians, accentuating the need for digital experiences tailored to seniors' unique needs.
Despite the rapid advancement of digital health technologies, research indicates that many senior citizens struggle to adapt. A recent study reported that 40% of adults over 65 believe their telemedicine visit was inferior to traditional in-person care, with a meager 5% finding it superior. The promise of convenience delivered by digital health is often overshadowed by the frustration associated with technical difficulties. An astounding 75% of senior citizens admit they need assistance when using new electronic devices.
Let's consider the patient portal app, a common touchpoint in the digital health journey. Despite its apparent simplicity, seniors find processes like logging in troublesome due to issues like forgotten passwords, technical bugs, or content readability. This scenario underlines the crucial need for comprehensive User Experience (UX) testing to eliminate these barriers and provide a seamless digital health experience.
The Complex Landscape of Healthcare UX Testing
The complexity of UX testing in healthcare has been exacerbated by the interplay of multiple modules, services, platforms, and vendors. Take Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems, for instance, which undergo frequent updates, each one potentially impacting the system as a whole. Traditional manual testing methodologies are proving to be time-consuming and costly.
Though automation has revolutionized sectors from automotive to finance, the healthcare industry appears to be lagging. A study by the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) reveals that a mere 15% of healthcare providers have adopted modern test automation platforms. Meanwhile, a significant 41% still rely on manual testing. As EMR systems grow increasingly complex and customized, this over-reliance on manual testing poses daunting challenges.
The gravity of this issue is amplified by a startling revelation from the HIMSS study - only 6% of healthcare executive leaders express confidence in their organizations' testing practices. In an increasingly digitized healthcare environment, such a low level of assurance raises substantial concerns about patient safety. Although 75% of the surveyed providers have invested in software testing to safeguard their bottom lines, nearly two-thirds confess feeling inadequately resourced in terms of time, money, and talent to meet future testing requirements. As the list of testing demands grows, QA teams are frequently stretched thin, leaving many potential user journey scenarios untested.
The Power of AI in UX Testing for Better Patient Outcomes
AI technologies hold the potential to revolutionize UX testing in healthcare.
The modern healthcare application is a labyrinth of potential user journeys - a typical mobile application model can yield over 9 billion separate scenarios. To effectively navigate this colossal testing landscape, test automation tools employing Machine Learning (ML) algorithms are critical.
By analyzing historical patterns, prioritized cases, and real-user insights, ML algorithms can auto-generate test cases and meticulously scrutinize each user interaction. This approach ensures an optimal digital experience and robust coverage of potential issues.
The HIMSS study also provides a glimmer of hope, revealing that nearly 80% of healthcare providers plan to adopt real-time testing analytics for quality assurance. AI's role becomes pivotal in augmenting the capacity of software testing teams in this scenario.
By leveraging historical patterns and prioritizing test cases, ML-powered testing tools can automate crucial tests across various platforms, devices, and operating systems. This symbiosis of human expertise and AI not only bolsters productivity but enables comprehensive testing coverage within tight time constraints.
The Future of Healthcare Software UX Testing
The path to perfecting a patient’s digital journey is fraught with challenges.
Healthcare organizations venturing into automated software testing or contemplating in-house tool replacement must stay abreast of evolving healthcare testing requirements. This understanding is key when evaluating automation vendors against the backdrop of regulatory standards. Opting for a technology-agnostic solution ensures extensive test coverage, boosts efficiency, and guarantees longevity as technologies advance. Introducing your software QA teams to user-friendly, low/no-code test automation tools can simplify the onboarding process and fosters better collaboration with Dev teams and business testers.
As we stand at the precipice of this transformative period in healthcare, it's clear that the AI revolution holds the key to unlocking the future of digital healthcare UX testing. By harnessing AI's potential, healthcare providers can ensure a user-friendly, seamless digital experience for the fastest-growing demographic, setting new industry standards in the process.
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