Aaron Conant 0:18

Hello everybody, Happy Wednesday, my name is Aaron Conant, I'm C0-founder and Managing Director of BWG Connect we are a networking and knowledge sharing group of 1000s of organizations who do exactly that we network and now share together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, shift changes, whatever it might be in the digital landscape as a whole. And that's been really interesting past 15 to 18 months is, you know, a lot of conversation before that was around Hey, that traditional retailer space now huge shift into education, higher education, US state, local governments, and of course, healthcare. And in looking at, you know, that patient experience as a whole, what are they looking for? And so, I'm setting up organizations to bring it up. Yeah, I decided to host this, this webinar today, we want to be as educational and informational as possible. So at any point in time, if you have a question, drop it in the chat, the q&a, email to me, Aaron Aaron, at BWGConnect.com kind of the last thing here for housekeeping items is we're starting three to four minutes after the hour, and just you know, we're going to wrap up with three to four minutes to go in the hour as well, I want to make sure you have time, you know, get to your next meeting without being late and grab a cup of coffee along the way. So look at the you know, about, you know, 30 or 5455 minutes in the hour, we're going to be wrapping it up. With that, we're gonna go ahead and kick it off, as they noted, just talking with 30 to 40 brands a week, you know, this, this thought around, Hey, what's going on as a whole, in the digital the patient experience as a whole. And so we got some great friends, great partners of the network and proficient at Adobe. And we do a lot of connections along the way. And so we're able to do is kind of do a deep dive in a data analysis and kind of get together report, you know, the three of us together. And it's super interesting. And so we also have, Kyle, so we, you know, we want to do some quick Roundtable. Just intros Kyle, if you want to go first, quick, brief intro on yourself, your organization really quickly, then we jump over to Paul who can jump to town and then we're Let's kick off with some of this data as a whole. But Kyle, if you want to jump in really quick revenge on yourself in in BWG. I mean, I kind of gave it as Connect. So I just you know, yourself and your role. They may jump on top. Yep.

Kyle Johnson 2:34

Perfect. Hello, everybody. Kyle Johnson here at BWG, and I co lead the data initiatives here. So we go out to market and do surveys, thought leadership pieces in partnership with with some of the the true experts like Tom and Paul, and it was a pleasure working with them. So back to you.

Aaron Conant 2:53

Yeah. Awesome. Paul, you want to jump in and I'll get to Tom?

Paul Griffiths 2:57

Sure. My name is Paul Griffiths. I'm a principal in the healthcare practice at Perficient. My team and I think about digital health solutions and strategies, really kind of putting, putting all these different technology pieces together, and helping our clients with kind of strategic advice and make sure that we're we're seeing the trends in the future. So I'm super excited to be here, especially because I think there's so much that's happening with really kind of coming out of COVID. Thankfully, I think there's a lot of questions about what what was temporary, what's going to stick around? How do we need to adapt for good. So I'm really excited for this conversation.

Aaron Conant 3:40

Awesome, Tom. and you?

Tom Swanson 3:42

Thank you, Aaron. And thank you, Paul. Tom Swanson, I head the Healthcare and Life Sciences Strategy and Marketing team here at Adobe. And you know, many of you might actually be surprised that Adobe has a healthcare specific practice. I've been with Adobe for Gosh, going on five years now. And I actually come from the life sciences side of the industry, where I spent well over a decade of being an Adobe customer, before I joined Adobe, so I have the perspective of having sat on that side of the table and tried to implement these tools in order to solve the problems that, you know, hopefully, we're gonna have a chance to address here today.

Aaron Conant 4:32

Awesome. So Kyle was I'm gonna kick it over to you if you want to kind of start rolling through some of the data. And what I want to throw out there is it's kind of open commentary and questions as a whole. So if you see the data, you have a question on it, drop into the chat, the q&a, email it to me chat and q&a is gonna be the quickest. But if we want to roll through that, and then you know, Paul and Tom, we can have a conversation on it as well. But Kyle, I'll kick it over to you to kind of kick us off here.

Kyle Johnson 4:57

Absolutely. So this will just be a preface to this conversation and I'm going to keep it to five minutes or less. The basis of this project that that we did with our friends at Perficient and Adobe was going out to the healthcare executives themselves. And basically orchestrating a survey, we heavily focused on providers that have that frontline experience with the patients. And we wanted to understand that the top monitored and modernization initiatives underway in response to the pandemic, as well as just the longer term initiatives that are taking effect. So let's just dive right in. This was a survey of 120, just over 120 respondents, heavily represented among the C level, and providers, so mostly hospitals, nearly 60% of our respondents were at at regional and national hospitals. But we also had a plethora of other respondents from pharmaceuticals, from medical devices, from some of these other areas of the industry that layered on some additional feedback as well. And hopefully everybody has a chance to just leave for that report. It's much longer than what I'll be going through here, but a lot of great direct executive feedback that we were able to collect. Those are the high level metrics. As Tom and I were speaking, we really zeroed in on three areas of focus that came through in this survey, those were the Self Service initiatives, remote care and functionality as well as personalization initiatives. And we dedicated questions to each of those and, and we'll go through some of the high level data points that we found in each. So starting with self service, providers and healthcare executives noted this is the most immediate and then top priority of focus that came through in the data, over 90% of respondents are viewing this as at least a moderate priority. And, and a large portion, nearly two thirds were viewing it as a high priority. And that trend is only solidifying over time and becoming more pronounced. So folks are focusing on the Self Service initiatives first to basically raise practice efficiency, if more time back to their practitioners to do what they do best. And just create a basically greater ease of use with lower friction for further patient basis. So just a few highlights, we found people are looking to some of these replicable and kind of routine workflows to automate first with self service like payments, like knowledge directories and practitioner directories. Accessing patient history, people want to have more access to their own their own data and information from the consultations and, and the care that they're receiving. As far as emerging opportunities, this is kind of the the virgin territory that that the practices haven't necessarily gotten around to it as mature a sense yet, so automating bookings, preference management, customer support, ordering drugs, or devices through e commerce and self diagnosis all on the horizon, but not as deeply penetrated yet. Moving to remote care. Obviously, telehealth utilization spiked in many cases near 100%. At the peak of the pandemic, it's waned a bit since you have some of the some of the overhanging questions about reimbursement rates and, and long term adoption. But one thing is clear, there's a new floor and a whole, a whole new audience of folks that are very open to and appreciative of having the remote care and telehealth channel available to them. So we expect this to be a secular growth area, all the practices continue to focus on it. And it's rolled out to routine care first and follow up visits kind of your basic functionality, booking booking remotely. But also we're starting to see the emergence of remote patient monitoring. And that's coming through with innovations on the device front as well as the analytics front. And there's a lot of excitement that we found in the qualitative feedback from executives in in these areas. So much more on that in the report. But this is kind of the second leg of innovation that we found a lot of great content on in the survey. Lastly, we have personalization, which is of high importance, but the least mature of the three trends and and we're seeing folks that want to get much more advanced with personalizing their data files, tying it to the preference management we just spoke about, as well as better marketing. But these are these are less penetrated than some of the remote care initiatives and the Self Service initiatives, but on the horizon, maybe the start to really take hold in 2022 and beyond. So I'll leave it there though. are a few of the kind of key contributions from the report, there's a lot more detail on how far along people are with, with each of these three legs of innovation in the full report, and you're more than welcome to follow up. If you have any more questions. I'll leave this slide up just to close. But here are just a handful of technology buckets are areas that pertain to each of the three segments. Aaron, I'm going to turn it back to you. That's my final slide.

Aaron Conant 10:26

Yeah, it's super interesting in in, you know, if you give them the ball on time, but it's funny how much these are, you know, so we've done a call on the patient side, but just to reframe it, this was not done with a patient perspective, but the provider perspective, it drastically overlaps right with exactly what the patient side is looking for. So which is, which is really neat. But, you know, Paul, can you do first self service, remote personalization? You know, three big topics here, does this, or does this surprise you? Anything? Like that was super interesting Hear that? Either like, you're like, Well, yeah, we've been talking about this for a month, or, you know, or for, you know, 15 months now, or? Wow, this one really shocked me, we'd love to hear your thoughts on, you know, these three areas?

Kyle Johnson 11:15

Yeah, I think this is this is emblematic of, you know, a saying that was going around, which is, you know, COVID was the Chief Digital Transformation officer for a lot of healthcare organizations, right, it just, it we saw five years of innovation happen in weeks, not months. So what what I think this is actually really reflective of is the fact that hospitals in particular, had to stop orienting around provider schedules, which is actually kind of the core of the of the patient provider relationship for hospital, and actually think about how to deliver care, kind of to survive. Right. So I think that there was a radical change. And, and the question that I have is, okay, how, how short term is this or not, right? These are three things that we talk to our clients about constantly. So my theme is always, you know, consumers want an easy, sticky, and pervasive, meaning they want it to be simple and frictionless. They want it to be kind of draw them in and kind of learn about them over time. And they want to be able to do it. You know, they want to be able to transact on whatever device they want, or whatever time and not feel like they're kind of hemmed in by some organizational decision. And that's what a lot of these, these, these three kind of big use cases are about. So on the one hand, I'm I'm not surprised. I think the really interesting question is, how much of this is going to last? And how much of this was temporal? And I think that's, that's the question a lot of our clients are struggling with Now, how do we make how do we make business value plus?

Aaron Conant 13:06

My Tom, your, your thoughts, these three? They do they surprise you? in line with what? You've lived in this space for a long time?

Tom Swanson 13:15

Yeah. And no, Aaron, it didn't surprise me at all. Right. And I think that, you know, what, I guess was a bit of a surprise, right. And I want to go back to something that Paul just mentioned, right, which was that historical, historically, or the kind of the legacy engagement model was one that was very much centered on the availability or the expertise of the healthcare professional, right, where the HCP, or the doctor, right was in the center of the engagement model, one of the profound changes that we've seen since the pandemic, and it's illustrated in each of these three big themes that we've identified here is this idea of the patient or the consumer moving into the center of the engagement model. Right now, patient centricity is something that in the industry we have been talking about for years, but it was always the question of, what does that mean, and how do you accomplish it? I find it really interesting that you know, having COVID-19 as the chief transformation officer for healthcare, bright, actually kind of forced that to happen. You know, in terms of because of the changes in the engagement model and kind of the physical accessibility of the hcps it forced this dramatic change in Well, okay, now we actually have to go where our customer is and engage them how when you know, they Want to be engaged, as opposed to, like Paul said, kind of the organizational where the administrative decision making being, while they're, you know, the HCP is available on this day through these hours? And you know, if you want to see him or her, you have to accommodate their schedule, not yours. Right. So I think that change. And, Paul, I want to address something that you've mentioned, as well, regarding kind of the temporal nature of these changes, I, I'm of the opinion, that kind of once you give consumers, right, a taste of being in the center of the engagement model. Once that genie is out of the bottle, it's incredibly hard to put it back. Right. So I think, you know, as we move into kind of whatever, and I know, we all hate the term new normal, right, whatever that is going to look like, I think you're going to see more emphasis on kind of the patient or the customer. And I think that we're just going to continue to see growth in these three themes, as payer, as the providers, and the payers, and the customers themselves become more comfortable with the customer being at the center of the engagement model, as opposed to the HCP.

Aaron Conant 16:23

Yeah, 100%. And what's really interesting is in this split, you now have, you know, the patient, you know, who's in a traditional sense of the customer, now is requiring it right, and it wasn't necessarily out of original, you know, thought I want to do this, but COVID, put them in that position. And we can break apart little age demographics and a little bit, but just a question comes over here, which I love to get into, because we can dig into some of the data here. In regards to in others, if you have questions drop in the Questions tab or the chat, the remote patient monitoring any ideas in the area of IoT with respect to connectivity and such wearables, devices? med tech products? I mean, it popped up here, you know?

Kyle Johnson 17:11

Yeah, it was the any academic medical center right now is, is looking at or running, you know, running, you know, effectively trials on remote patient monitoring, I think there's a, in a really disease specific way. So I think what is happening, and and you can see this innovation happen, again, a little bit more tied into particular service lines, or particular disease treatment states. But it's this, it's this acknowledgment that, you know, hospitals have to support long term, long term disease management remotely, because they just had to. And then as Tom said, once, once you do that, why would you go back? So I think, I think there's a lot more, I think that a lot more kind of small innovation, kind of componentry innovation. So looking at, hey, we used to have to force someone to come in. So we could, you know, we could check their vitals, can we get that information remotely, I think that's coming about the same time that, you know, frankly, there's a lot of good data around keeping patients in their home. And for certain disease states, it's actually better. So I think you'll, you'll see on the remote patient monitoring piece, a lot more of this kind of, you know, small AI innovation, and it's it's going to be around, you know, specific disease management, or it's going to be that caring for aging, aging parents, and figuring out a way and how to get that data, you know, back to their medical care professionals, not not just you know, from this kind of remote nurse program. So there's a lot of questions around like, how do we just keep tabs on on on patients when they're outside of our facility? And that's a really radical, that's a really radical change to thinking. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't that long ago that the definition of the patient was they were admitted. And they were in your building. Right. And I'll still a lot of the data structures represent that. So I think the challenge is that remote patient monitoring has is really just getting getting the systems to catch up and be more porous and allow this data to be ingested in a way that's going to be helpful. But I think that's, that's why it's going to be again, I'm probably a little more seeing it on the on the disease states and on the cific treatment plans, innovation on remote monitoring there, but I don't know, Tom, what do you what do you think?

Tom Swanson 19:41

I think the ubiquitous nature of these are all wearing what Right, right. Um, and I'm sure each of you saw the announcement. I think it was over the weekend, right that Apple wants to actually have X To be able to contribute data to EHR, right, and that Apple is working directly with Cerner. Of course epic is, you know, being epic and kind of holding off, you know, on on partnering with anybody right now. But I think it's, it's an interesting extension of the fact that these wearable devices, right have gone from just monitoring, you know, whether you were exercising or not to being able to do clinical grade EKGs, right, to be able to measure blood pressure to, you know, that there are applications you can do now, where just through the skin contact sensors, you can actually do blood glucose measurements, right? I mean, these are all clinical grade things that used to require the patient or the customer going to the doctor and getting these tests performed. Right. And, and I mean, I know, I'm guilty, right? of, you know, if you know, you have your annual physical coming up, right, suddenly exercising, eating better doing things, right, in order to make your numbers look better. You know, when you're going to the doctor, right, which is not a realistic snapshot of how you live, right, where these things actually do that kind of real time monitoring, and can give your provider or your payer that have real time data as to what your lifestyle choices are, and kind of how healthy you are, right. And if that enables me as a patient or a customer to get a personalized benefits package, to have, you know, my deductible set based on my, my wellness versus, you know, these aggregated numbers, you know, to avoid having to go physically to the doctor's office, because I can share all of this real time information directly with my provider, or in this is where I, you know, I view the potential partnership between apple and EHR systems as a good thing, not necessarily a creepy thing, right? Because how cool would it be to be able to manage your own electronic health record here, right at habit completely consumable by any hospital or any doctor's office or any payer organization that you choose to share it with? Right, and where it's updated daily, real time based on the real things that you're doing? Right? I mean, the data is there, why not capture it and use it in a way that best suits you, and the proactive management of your wellness versus, you know, some other less patient centric way?

Aaron Conant 23:04

There's some great stuff coming into it in what's what's key. And a lot of it is around this data, right? And I'm going to get to those questions. But just something that's popped into my head is with this data, right, and I think, with this data that if we could share it with them, it enhances the chatbots the knowledge and directories, if you're downloading it, and they know who you are, and you're signing in, the telehealth portals are you do have ongoing diabetes, they know it right away. Right, which then also ties into remote patient monitoring. I think, you know, disease states, like you were saying, Paul, this key piece of collecting and storing data, and gathering it in a real time real world environment is just power. So almost all of these things maybe outside of

Tom Swanson 23:51

automate and Aaron. That's that's the point I was going to make earlier, before I got sidetracked by myself was that these three themes actually all completely tied together and support each other in some capacity. Right? It's not like self service is isolated from kind of remote care and remote services. It's not like self services isolated from personalization, or personalization, isolated from remote care. All of these things are predicated upon, right? Having access to data, using that data to better understand your patient or your customer, and then being able to personalize their experience through the channels in which they choose to be engaged based upon that data. Right. So it's truly the marrying of data with content, and then delivering it in a way that makes sense, you know, to the patient as well as the provider.

Paul Griffiths 24:50

Yeah, my my hope is that we'll see. I mean, I, when you were talking about Apple, I was thinking about Google's PHR way back in the day which you didn't agree with that bag, but it's basically The digital shoe box, right? You kind of like put your pieces of paper in. And it was static. And I think what we're talking about now is much more dynamic. So you know, pretty soon it's going to be, you know, series going to say, hey, Tom, don't have that second Margarita. I can see that you did not go to the gym. Right where we're at. We're going to get to that point. Yeah. And then we'll see what happens.

Tom Swanson 25:23

Well, I mean, I know Paul, that is it. Google is part of kind of the voice recognition work that they're doing with Alexa now is to actually have Alexa able to tell right? If you are under stress, or under duress of some kind, just based on changes in your inflection. Yep. Right. So I don't I don't think we're that far away from having Alexa say, you know, hey, Tom, are you alright? Are you feeling okay? Do I need to call the doctor?

Aaron Conant 25:59

It's, it's crazy. There's a bunch of here. I want to get to questions as they come in. And they're awesome. We might have to repeat this and invite everybody back. Because I think there's enough to talk about here for another hour and a half, two hours and or maybe it's a in person roundtable where we sit around and have beers till Alexa tells us to stop. So here we go, how do your tech nominee address these kind of an order? And we're gonna blend that together? So I'm gonna read a couple at a time. How do you technology, honey, your technologies and support EHR? So I'm reading this, how do you how do you technologies in support EHR integration with technologies such as telehealth portals or fitness broke platforms, such as My Fitness Pal integrate into EHR as well. And then the next one is our, you know, EMR EHR systems, assisting these carriers, key areas for our providers building and or acquiring. And then there's some more I like IoT, PII data, right, bringing the Human Centered Design back into it. So old days at IDEO, kind of a thought there, but we'd love to hear, you know, how to technologies, you know, support EHR integration, you know, telehealth, my fitness, pal, integrate, you know, all these fun things, you probably see the same questions I'm looking at. Paul?

Paul Griffiths 27:21

Sure. So I think that there's a, there's a couple different break points in the system. There is certainly a lot of health data that I might track, and I could share with my primary care. And there are some primary care doctors and models, which are new and exciting and innovative and are about spending more time with patients. Sometimes that data is helpful for them, where we're all this is really being very useful right now, is an emergent medical situation. So if you, you know, to talk about self service, remote personalization, really the the big opportunity that the really close opportunity is building tools that people can use, so they can recognize that they're having a problem. And then once they recognize having a problem, you tell them the point of care that they can receive. And so they're their Alexa skills now. So there's some hospitals who built for example, Alexa skills, where you know, you can talk to them. And that's really just a way to, to initiate an escalation, to have either a nurse call, they're enrolled in a certain program, or just reach out to them. And that's just a different form. Right. But it's that's kind of, again, it's self service for personalized, you have that all the way to, again, people who have certain disease states, and if they're taking their glucose monitoring their glucose, and it's above a certain amount, they, you know, a team is alerted, and then they take kind of proactive action. So I think the the data that we're all the data we're gathering conserve is really successful escalation points right now, I don't think that the, you know, the EMR systems are really trying to try to figure out what they are because they, you know, they started off as, as really kind of being in health, and then they moved into revenue cycle management and billing. And then now there's kind of this like CRM quality to it. But, but actually sticking a lot of maybe meaningful, maybe not meaningful data into an EHR doesn't make a ton of sense. That's that's a, that's a that creates a lot of different questions and challenges. I'm hoping that we're we'll get to is something a little bit more like what what Tom was, was alluding to, where if I'm the patient, and it's my data, I can decide to connect with you. And when I'm done with you, I can take back that connection. So right now as a patient, there's an asymmetry of information. The hospital collects data on me, right I go in for labs, the hospital has that data. If Have you ever tried to get your medical records from a from a hospital, you often take a visit to the bowels of the system somewhere in the basement, the medical records office, and some of the last Xeroxes and fax machines are there. And they give you a physical copy. Right that that is still, sadly, a lot of the what a lot of the healthcare system runs on. So I think that piece of who owns the data and what my record is, and my record as a person, versus my record, as here's a series of incidents that I have had as a patient with your healthcare system that is somewhat incomplete, which is, which is really the the EHR right now, I think it's probably more likely that we will find systems that will augment what we should put in the EHR. But the interconnection between the two will be a lot more valuable. And that's where Cerner and epic and these other, you know, major systems are really focusing right now, how at least do we figure out how to safely share data so that someone can monitor something and take appropriate escalation. But I'm, I'm hopeful that all of this data that we collect about ourselves will become will become ours, and that will actually help us get better care as patients. So I think that's my that's my very optimistic way. I know,

Tom Swanson 31:22

And Paul, I, I agree, or am as equally hopeful? Right? Because I think, ultimately, that's where we want to go. Right. And I think it spans healthcare, right? I mean, or extends beyond healthcare, where it's like we as consumers, whether we're consumers of healthcare or any other industry, right, that we want to be able to manage our data and share it with whomever, you know, we choose to, and then, like you said, be able to pull that back. Right, what if we're no longer going to continue to do business with you? The the asymmetry of the healthcare system, I think is is a serious problem. Right. And there is

Kyle Johnson 32:16

a problem, it's an existential risk for the healthcare systems. Now, I think what COVID has shown is that it's actually not good. It's it's a risk point for healthcare, healthcare organizations to lock up their data. Because when it when crisis happens, then everyone kind of it needs to get it back. And it's very inefficient. Right.

Tom Swanson 32:34

Well, and the and again, and that's exactly where I was going is that I think that the pandemic, once again, right, is is littered with silver linings as far as the healthcare industry. And patient centricity is concerned, right? Because the the lack of kind of collaboration and cross ecosystem sharing, right was exactly what you said, existential crisis, right? for healthcare when the pandemic hit, right, suddenly, there was a real compelling reason to share that data, right, which showed that the system is actually capable of doing it, you just have to be willing, right? And you have to be a willing collaborator with other potential competitors, right within the system with the eye towards, it's ultimately better for the customer or the patient, even if it may, you know, eliminate some perceived competitive value, right, that that you think you may have, right. And so, I mean, I think what what it's going to take is that the technology for the collection and distribution and democratization of all of this data exists, it's going to take a willingness and an openness on the part of all of the participants in a given healthcare ecosystem to openly share and be transparent about the sharing of that data in order to land where I think consumers want us to land.

Paul Griffiths 34:17

Yeah, everyone ever the the green field is creating an experience that's so good that people want to stick with you, which is soon going to be how everyone's going to compete. But you know, I was joking about this. People talk about you know, the the the razor and blade as a business model, right? Like you you own the you own the razor and you sell the blades, and no one likes that. No one wants that as a bit like no consumer likes being trapped in a system, even if it makes good business. It's a short term thing. It's a short term advantage. And I think now, the the healthcare systems that are that are most primed to be disrupted are the ones who are who are not fitting thinking, How do I put all this together for a better experience? Because I do think that I do think there's downsides to Apple and Amazon getting into healthcare, I think they're just, it doesn't make sense for a patient to necessarily put, you know, try to engage with these big tech companies even further on that. So I don't think hospitals need to be worried about them directly interfering. I think that hospitals have to think about how their business model is predicated on some ideas that are really, there really don't make sense. As if you think about ourselves as consumers, right? I should be able to take my stuff with me, you know, should it be about me, like, I do want to receive this care. And if we get that right, to be really positive, we get that, right. I mean, physicians will be happier, patients will be happier and healthier, you know, the the system will be more efficient. And ideally, you know, you know, profitably health helpful to everyone and the communities they serve. So I think there's a lot of upsides into going all in on that experience. It's just, you know, it's complicated.

Aaron Conant 36:03

Right? I mean, I want to tag off on that just a little bit, cuz you're talking about complications. We talked a little bit about, you know, data as a whole. What are the implications on healthcare and health insurance? And how do you handle pH? I PII with these integrations, the whole? It's a big concern, right? across the board? What do you how do you handle the PII data?

Paul Griffiths 36:29

Well, I mean, I think this is my opinion. I mean, not financial advice. That's correct. That's right. I mean, I think, ultimately, right, you have to treat that data as is the property of the individual, right, for which you have collected that data, and that it should be up to me, right, as that patient or that consumer, who I share it with and how it's used, right? I mean, I think the industry has a certain kind of requirement, or due diligence around security, right, in terms of protecting the data and making it accessible only to those right that that need or should have access to it. And then privacy rights should be dictated by the consumer or the individual, not the company that actually has collected the data. Right. And I think if you apply that methodology to healthcare information, right, what what's gonna have to happen is that the legal and regulatory bodies that govern things like HIPAA, are going to have to catch up with the technology and the consumer demands, as opposed to the other way around, right? Because as a consumer, and this is part of what you know, Paul, you and I have just been chatting about is I should be able to dictate who has access to my data and how it's used, right? So if I want a company, or a provider, or an insurance company, to market to me, specifically based upon a disease state, and I give them permission to do so, they should be allowed to do so. Right, as opposed to, you know, hiding behind the fact that well, HIPAA says, I can't do that. It's like, Well, what do you mean, right? It's my data. It's my personalized experience. And I'm giving you permission. So go ahead. Right, you need to have the legal and regulatory environment catch up with what the consumer is demanding, and expecting.

Tom Swanson 38:53

Yeah, I mean, I haven't fortunately, read read HIPAA, and its requirements many times for this point. And it's just helpful to say it was written, you know, that the most sophisticated piece of technology, when HIPAA was written was the fax machine. And that's still actually considered a secure communication protocol, because you can see where it starts, and you can see where it ends. And copies are theoretically, you know, kept. But but that's the, you know, the the state of the world that we're living in now, in terms of what it means for me to participate in my health digitally, is very different from 20 plus years ago, how I might be exploited, you know, for information I've shared about myself. So I think it's a I think it's a really interesting question. I think, fortunately, a lot of these even technologies that we're looking at on the screen, there is inherently a kind of permission in that. So to the extent that you're serving me on my healthcare journey, which is complicated doesn't always prefer being in The hospitals we know now, it's it's really, it's really beneficial. So I just again, to be the optimist, see a lot of these marketing tools and technologies which, you know, are used to sell everything from sprites to subprime mortgages. And and I think man, can't we use this stuff to get people healthier? Like, don't we think we've amassed all this knowledge? And what are we using it for to sell, you know people new handbags. And and I just feel like we we should be able to figure this out. And so I think the organizations that are really willing to sit down and and understand the what they're comfortable with, are able to get a little further a little faster. We've had a lot of great innovative ideas go by the wayside, because we got really close. And then a client's legal counsel would say, yeah, we're not 100% Sure. And I think that's, that's really disappointing. Again, I think, I think COVID showed that people were clamoring for either for this information. So we were, we were helping clients stand up chatbots because their phone systems were down, because so many people were calling in about how do I get a COVID test? So when push comes to shove, I think there's also you know, innovation finds a way. So this, you know, these these ideas that came out now, as as pilots, I think now the hard question is how do we integrate them back to our systems power, they just part of doing business? And how many of them will kind of, you know, survive. And I think HIPAA is one of those, those sticks that kind of get can get used to squash innovation. I am hopeful that having seen the necessity, having had, you know, patients go through it and still be happy with the organizations that we went to give it another shot.

Aaron Conant 41:54

Yeah. Love it. Any other questions are coming through, drop me the questions in the chat there. You know, another one that just came in here that we've been trying to get to is, and then how do you bring in the human Human Centered Design, human computer interaction? In I don't know if this goes back to Tom, kind of like the pre called chitchat, the human computer interaction is a lot easier for a younger demographic than it is for an older demographic, on a percentage basis. And so in yet, it's an older demographic that generally would, you know, makes a higher use of the healthcare system as a whole. So it's interesting, get people who are driving demand and people who are currently using it.

Tom Swanson 42:44

Well, in what we were chatting about, before the call started, Aaron was the fact that the older demographic, right, that has historically been the most engaged in their healthcare ecosystem, was also the most vulnerable, right to the pandemic. And so they were the ones that kind of not only were forced to seek alternative means of engagement, but then also really driving a significant shift in means of engagement. I mean, my, my parents are in their 70s, right. And they, through the pandemic discovered the joys of telehealth. And, you know, it was my mother who actually said, it's like having a house call like they had in the 50s and 60s, right, because now the doctor is coming to you, as opposed to you going to the doctor. And Aaron, I think that's where you can begin to extend and kind of build in the human interaction through these digital channels, right? Where that the fact that you as the patient are in the center of the engagement model, the doctor is coming to you at a time and a place that is convenient for you. And then you have access to all of the materials, the data, anything, it is right that at your fingertips through these digital digital channels. That is a more personalized experience than you would receive in that personal face to face experience. Right. And we've actually seen Paul, this is something new and I have chatted about before that we've seen metrics regarding empathy, actually increase through the use of telehealth for the very reasons that we're discussing, right is that instead of investing 30 4045 minutes into a doctor's appointment, where you still are not have not seen the doctor, right and you're 45 minutes into it. I'm actually having the doctor and you agree upon a time and the doctor calls at that time. The end result is that the HCP is spending more quality time with the patient than the churn and burn approach to getting as many people through the office as possible. And that that kind of personalized communication and convenience and access is creating a more empathetic healthcare system. Right, which is, I think, kind of counterintuitive, right? That you would think that a digital or remote engagement is more personal than a face to face one, but that's what the data is showing us.

Paul Griffiths 45:38

Yeah, I'd also add a couple things, one, you know, 50%, of any of these kind of initial interactions of health searches or engagements online are done for a loved one. So I don't have as much, you know, heartburn about that. Because even if it's, you know, oftentimes it's a, it's a adult child of someone who's, you know, thinking about how do I care for my, you know, for my aging parents, right? That's a really big demographic. So there's, there's a lot of care that's being delivered. And, again, even if it's not, for the person who's looking for it, there may be conversation or at least more comfortable with the technology. I mean, specifically how to get the voice of the consumer in there. You know, we, we tend to back up and talk about personas. So what's the audience you want to activate? How can you understand who they are, and to build some of that empathy? And, and using these kind of, you know, personas, just being ideas of, of example, people and their journeys that we look at? Okay, what's, uh, what's our customer journey for, you know, for maternity patient? Okay, well, that's something that's, that's knowable, we, you know, we have experience and research on that. But let's start trying to put ourselves in the patient's shoes, and understand if this is a good or bad experience. And so I think, you know, the more, the more you can look at your own experience delivery through the eyes of the patients who are receiving it, the more places that you'll find little tweaks that you can make, that will make a huge difference. I mean, you know, one, one story on that we were working with a client and, and it was a, it was a cancer program. And they had this the stage where there was this kind of fall off. So if people kind of miss their appointments, the chance of them coming back was really low. And when we realized this, it was all just like a communication thing. They would they would go to reschedule and, and they would get like this automated response that was like, You missed your appointment. Here's what to do. And it was just they needed to change it to be a little nicer, right? And so these like, small little moments where you're thinking about, yeah, you're stressed, you're concerned, you have cancer, you've made a mistake, you've missed an appointment. How are you feeling in that moment? And what's the experience we're delivering? It was like, functional, but it wasn't, it wasn't very empathetic. And I think that's, that's the difference between experience and a process, right? The process is like, super efficient. And we need that in healthcare, but in experiences, you're putting in the empathy, and you're understanding how I'm helping you get to that next next action. And so that the experience really isn't is a triumph of a process that requires an understanding of the human on the other side.

Aaron Conant 48:39

Again, this is you're talking, you know, and I'm going back to something you know, Paul, people are struggling with is it around to stay. And when you look at personalization, self service and remote, I flip as a, as a patient as a consumer to how I buy anything else, right? I want it to be very relevant to me, I want to be able to sit in my house, and I want to order it and have it delivered to me. And in those companies that are able to do that Excel, Amazon, apple, right, customer focus customer centered, which we're kind of talking about here as well. It's going to be a requirement for healthcare organizations as a whole, to figure it out in that aspect, right. And those that can personalize and keep data safe. I mean, we're in that space. We got GDPR but NCC pa but it's the exact same thing. How can you give the patient the right patient, the right information, the right treatment, at the right time in the right spa and that sometimes remote but sometimes it's not you being able to discern that then that takes data. So I think my personal opinion, it's brought it thriving, it's here it has to be because Patients are consumers of other products. And they've spoken in it already in that segment. But this is exactly what they

Kyle Johnson 50:06

want. So, yeah, I mean, I think certainly going back to my, the, the theme on the escalation, what I want is a health care system that's ready to catch me when when I'm gonna fall and not for a fallen, right. And so if you think about that, that requires some level of anticipation, some level of understanding where I am. That's a really good experience. You talked about Amazon and Apple. And really, their success was not technology. I mean, we think of it that way. But if you look at Amazon, you know, Jeff, Jeff Bezos, who just stepped down his first shareholder letters obsessed with the customer. And if you look at what they've done, and all the decisions they made, were around, how do we understand who our customer is and what they want. And that was kind of the primary way that they made decisions. If you look at, you know, Apple on the iPhone, nothing in the iPhone was really new, what they did is they put it together in a completely different way. And so this idea that its experiences actually were, these big technology companies have gotten really, really good. And they've gotten so good, we don't even notice anymore. Like, it's not even a surprise when I'm searching for something on my phone. And I go to Google Maps my desktop, and it knows that right? I kind of don't even notice anymore. Like, that's amazing. And I think that we're very conditioned to see the seams, right. And the breakdown. And healthcare is a really complicated continuity of care with a lot of rough patches, and a lot of scenes. And it doesn't feel that important to, I don't know, consolidate billing systems between our physician organization and our hospital to pick one. But when a patient gets two bills and is confused, right, like, that's, that's not a great experience. And so I think it's competing at experience is where, again, these we think of World Class companies, that's actually what they they are really, really doggedly focused on. And I think that's, that's something that's, that's helpful. So, you know, I have some canned talks that I give to executive teams that are, you know, they're, they were nervous about Amazon before made me nervous about them. Again, Apple cares also launch Bailey nervous about that. But it's really about the experience, like how do you win loyalty, and loyalty is no longer physical proximity. So the other side of this is great cell service, remote and personalization. I can talk to a doctor or another state, right at a remote telehealth visit. I think that's that's the that's the other side of this of the reason to, to do it is it's good. You can you can get out there. But if you don't do it, this is now where the competition is moving. And I think they're the early you know, the the early adopters, especially, you know, especially organizations that have great brands, and they can parlay that into great experiences that that's that's really lasting value.

Aaron Conant 53:09

Awesome. Well, I see where we're literally right at time here. And I do want to say a quick thank you, Paul. Tom, you guys are awesome friends, partners, supporters of you know, a lot of different organizations within the network on multiple different levels. And anybody if you have a chance to follow up more than habits and networking, knowledge sharing session, anybody you want to be connected with 100% worth a follow up conversation with Tom and Paul, you know, the content, the feedback around the status study that we did. Power Tom has it but we can we can make sure that we can actually with them. It's part of our set worth a follow up conversation. You know, I'll say like a Paul quick 32nd, like key takeaways. And I'll jump it over to Tom and then we'll wrap up and make sure people get to the next meeting without being late.

Paul Griffiths 53:56

Sure. I mean, key takeaways, consumers demand better experiences pay attention at your peril. By summary,

Tom Swanson 54:08

that's excellent. And Paul, all jump on top of that, right? It's not accidental that we have been interchangeably using the words consumer and customer with patient or plan member, right, because I think there are many, many lessons for the healthcare industry to learn from other industries, because consumer behavior is consumer behavior, right. And every single one of your patients is a consumer of some other industry. And they are making value judgments around their experience with you, based upon the experiences that they have with Marriott with Disney with Delta Airlines, right? I mean, all of those things are where those consumer expectations come from. That's what the healthcare industry needs to be paying attention. To awesome,

Aaron Conant 55:02

love it. We got to do another one of these. It was fantastic. Thanks everybody for sending in all the questions, the q&a, the comments, everything it was it was fantastic. It was fun. Look for a follow up email from us. We'll be sure to catch you with Paul at Tom. hope everybody has a fantastic Wednesday everybody take care stay safe. We're gonna wrap this up right now such that you can get on to your next meeting without being late. Thanks again guys. Alright guys, I'll see you guys