On Oct. 12, the New York-headquartered McKinsey & Company published an article entitled “Digital health ecosystems: Voices of key healthcare leaders.”
The article states that “Amid the disruption of traditional medical care caused by COVID-19, some patients have found assistance via new online services, including digital bill submission, medical assistance, online teleconsultations, and online medications. Perhaps for the first time, these patients found themselves part of digital health ecosystems, which are networks of digital service providers that offer a single solution for users’ healthcare needs.”
That said, “This article analyzes data from an interview series with 22 key international industry experts, as well as with 81 participants of our ninth Digital Healthcare Roundtable, to explore the following three themes: why and when healthcare players seek to provide digital healthcare solutions, what kind of digital health ecosystem healthcare players should provide, and how the implementation of a digital health ecosystem should be approached.”
According to the article, the groups interviewed included healthcare providers, pharmacies, big-tech companies, start-ups, governments, payers and insurers, pharma companies, and medtech companies
Key highlights from the report include:
- Digital healthcare solutions were perceived as a highly relevant topic by 68 percent of survey respondents
- Sixty-one percent of respondents consider the main purpose of digital health services to be improving well-being
- Thirty-nine percent wish to keep up with the competition and “fear being disrupted, as big-tech players and digital start-ups can leverage their technological capabilities and their [customer-generated] data as a core advantage”
- Sixty-three percent of respondents believe they are best positioned to orchestrate a health ecosystem
- A majority of survey respondents anticipate implementing digital healthcare solutions within the next three years
- Forty-one percent expecting to move on this topic within one to three years
- Thirty-six percent within six months to one year
- Twenty-three percent within the next six months
- Respondents do not believe that a time span of more than three years is needed because many already include ecosystems in their strategic plans
- Seventy-seven percent of survey respondents expected high demand for convenient digital health ecosystems among customers
- Seventy-one percent of respondents see the “telemedicine to online pharmacy” patient journey as an ideal starting position
- A clear strategic direction (74 percent) and cultural transformation (62 percent) are considered the most important success factors for the implementation of a digital health ecosystem.
- A majority of survey respondents see big-tech players (62 percent), healthcare providers (50 percent), and digital health start-ups (47 percent) as driving forces for digital health solutions
