ViVE 2024: Navigating the Digital Future - Unveiling Healthcare's Jetsons Era

At the recent 2024 ViVE Conference, an esteemed panel of healthcare digital leaders came together to envision the hospital of the future. The discussion, aptly titled "The Hospital's Jetsons Era," examined the seamless integration of hyper-personalized and AI-enabled healthcare solutions into the fabric of daily life. As the moderator of this pivotal conversation, I had the privilege of guiding a discussion that wove together the aspirations of healthcare’s technology enabled future and realities of healthcare's digital transformation today.

A Vision of Tomorrow

Our panelists — Andrea Fletcher of CMS, Charles Worthington of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Rebecca Stametz of Geisinger, and Jeff Terry of GE HealthCare — were united in their depiction of a future where healthcare experiences are invisible, guaranteed, transparent, and effortless for both consumers and clinicians. To realize this vision, care models must evolve beyond the confines of traditional settings, integrating digital seamlessly with the physical[i], and harmonizing services from home, community, and hospital as a unified ecosystem.

Future Experience: Physical to Physical+Digital

The present healthcare system, largely tethered to physical locations, must pivot towards new care models enabled by a strong digital core – cloud is the enabler, data is the driver and AI is the differentiator[ii] – that binds the journey from the hospital bed to the comfort of one's home. This digital thread will not only connect but also coordinate care across the continuum.

 Future Work: Humans to Humans+Machine

The clinical labor model is poised for a transformative partnership with digital machines. Diverse care team compositions including physicians, nurses, advance practice practitioners, community health workers, informal caregivers and patients will be put together in new ways while embracing the combined strengths of humans and AI.  These new human and machine care team compositions will have an emphasis on co-piloting to scale healthcare services to meet growing demands for healthcare services and enhance labor productivity.

Future of Payment: Incentivize Behavior to Support Investments

As we chart the course for a healthcare system that leverages both digital and human capabilities, we must adopt reimbursement models that promote preventative care and long-term health outcomes, providing the financial underpinning necessary for new care model innovation. 

Current Realities: Understanding Today to Build Tomorrow

Understanding today's challenges — aging demographics, workforce shortages, complex technology systems, and health inequity — is crucial to inform the reinvention of care models according to the panelists. We must understand these problems from a human perspective so we can begin to design future sustainable systems that address these challenges.  It is important to start with one problem at a time to make iterative progress in a positive direction today to build a better for tomorrow. 

Immediate Actions: Laying the Foundations Today

Healthcare leaders must act decisively, utilizing human-centered design to grasp the nuanced needs of both patients and clinicians. Shifting from a project to a product mindset will be essential, as will the cultivation of responsible AI, ensuring technology augments humanity, not diminishes it.

Conclusion: Crafting the Healthcare Tapestry of Tomorrow

“The Hospital's Jetsons Era” panel shed light on a healthcare future defined by seamless integration, predictive and guaranteed outcomes, and technology that fades into the background of our lives. As we reflect on these insights, it is our collective responsibility to steward these changes, ensuring a future where healthcare is not only a service we receive but a natural extension of our daily existence.

Acknowledgements

Special acknowledgment to my Accenture colleague, Dr. Kaveh Safavi, for his insights on 'Physical to Physical+Digital' experiences, 'Humans to Humans+Machine' workforce evolution, and incentivizing investment-supportive behaviors, as presented in "Healthcare's Four Futures" which were used to organize insights from "The Hospital's Jetsons Era" panel discussion.

This article was drafted with the assistance of a human, Amy Ritz , and machines, Writer and OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 in true human+machine collboration.

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[i] Accenture Research. Accenture Technology Vision 2023: When Atoms Meet Bits.

[ii] Accenture Research.  Reinvention in the age of generative AI.  Published January 12, 2024.