My office is filled with travel mugs, colorful pens, and various gadgets that I have accumulated from digital healthcare companies during the past five years as the chief innovation officer of Presbyterian Healthcare Services. This is not because I cannot keep the office clean. Rather, it is a symptom of a market breakdown, because the heavy implementation process has delayed the adoption of new digital health tools.

Digital health developers must spend time wooing me with gadgets, hoping that my health system will choose their products and start the arduous process I call “adopting gloves” to integrate their products into our system. The current digital healthcare market gives all participants no choice.

Due to adoption challenges, the speed at which any health system adopts new digital systems and guides their implementation is very slow. Due to three time-consuming tasks: signing, security review, and implementation, it takes up to two years for the average health system to actually start using new technology applications. Today, these tasks are not standardized, and each health system has its own unique process. Even trying out new digital health tools requires a multi-step review. In contrast, the health system does not conduct its own safety review of each drug they provide; they rely on a trusted third party, the Federal Drug Administration, to ensure the safety of their products. Digital health tools require similar standards.

In addition, the complexity of adopting digital health tools creates huge switching costs, which means that many health systems cannot even consider better technologies because they have invested a lot of resources and time into an application. This also means that every transaction with the medical system is high-risk for tech entrepreneurs, who are forced to spend precious time gaining attention through marketing instead of focusing on product research and design. These significant inefficiencies limit digital transformation and put many ideal tools on hold.

These tools are stranded because the digital revolution that drives the development of all other industries in the world has missed out on healthcare.There is no common data language, technology Lingua franca, The health system will continue to obtain the same marginal benefits from new technologies and platforms, rather than the transformation of the entire industry.Lack of digital health Lingua franca It is very inconvenient for patients and providers. Customers still need to provide a complete medical history when they go to see a new doctor. The doctors I know are still walking paper medical records between buildings today. Due to the lack of a common data language, health data is stored in isolation in the local dialect of each system provider.

For a long time, improved interoperability has been the beluga of healthcare. This is still an unsolvable problem because the supplier has not yet found a solution that combines an industry-wide, trust-based solution with an organizational structure that prioritizes the interests of members and patients. If the health system develops solutions together, interoperability will become a realistic goal. If the health system is to achieve digital transformation that can improve patient treatment outcomes and reduce costs, it must pool resources, reach agreement on standardization, and make large-scale technological changes. Digital health solutions should not be enforced by the government, nor should they come from companies that want to provide dividends to investors.

In other words, we need Civica Rx for digital health transformation. To solve this broken situation, we need to democratize data conversion and create a common public infrastructure for healthcare data. Civica Rx has demonstrated how the model works: health systems unite to develop new business frameworks, such as health utilities. They also focus on building trust and reducing costs, rather than creating profits for Wall Street.

If applied to digital health, this will enable the health system to finally unlock interoperability, and then use this common data language to create an application market that enables health systems, providers, and patients to fluently talk to each other and easily download digital health tools when we When downloading the application to our own smartphone. Our patients deserve better, and our providers deserve better. If we act around the common good, we may have a huge impact.