Angela Jones is Booz Allen Hamilton’s Digital Health Transformation Program Manager.This article is related to PhD.sheriff kevinChief Medical Officer of Booz Allen Hamilton.

For the past two years, healthcare organizations have focused on the immediate priorities of the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout, they have been significantly accelerating the adoption of telehealth capabilities to circumvent the limitations of physical, in-person care brought on by the pandemic. Without realizing it, institutions have already taken the first steps towards a bright future of smart healthcare.

Today’s confluence of technological advancements—in areas such as data analytics, digital sensor technology, 5G networks, artificial intelligence and machine learning, genomic medicine, and more—offers the potential to transform medicine as we know it.

But equally important is the opportunity to transform today’s access-based care models into new care delivery models that are connected, agile, personalized and driven by patient needs. The result will be a shift from agency-based, episodic, and disease-focused care to a model that promotes health through a longitudinal and holistic view of the patient.

Focusing on the immediate and overwhelming demands of the pandemic, many healthcare facilities have no choice but to modernize virtual care in a real-time and unplanned manner. The result is more of a fixed capability than an integrated whole that can truly transform the way healthcare is delivered, improving outcomes, reducing costs, reducing health disparities and reimagining the patient experience as a fully evolved and connected care journey.

By developing a clear vision for the future of the present—the future we aspire to see???, we can expand our ambitions and refine our modernization strategies to better harness the enormous potential offered by today’s technological advancements.

The Future of Healthcare: Smart, Efficient, Connected

So, what desirable attributes of healthcare do we see as we look to the future?

Healthcare knows no borders. Telehealth services can address geographic and physical barriers by improving access to quality care for patients in rural and underserved areas, patients who depend on the mobility of caregivers, and shift workers who have difficulty accessing care during standard office hours. People need expert care, no matter where they live and when they need it.

The care system of the future will provide a centralized “digital front door” with optimized content and channel access across multiple devices, giving patients the freedom to access care and services in a way that fits their lifestyle. And on the back end, a well-architected and integrated network can reduce the information silos that exist today and often separate and isolate information from care providers treating the same patients.

These integrated solutions deliver an omnichannel patient experience throughout the patient journey, enabling healthcare organizations to work from a common operational picture across multiple data sources, mobilizing healthcare teams to quickly deliver the insights they need to make a “whole patient” “decision making.

Proactive, preventive and personalized care through an integrated care team. Future care systems designed for proactive care management enable continuous communication, enabling care teams to proactively monitor conditions and prevent critical issues.

Biometric sensors can look at trends rather than taking a single measurement in time, while patient-friendly apps can be used for medication reminders or scheduling follow-up appointments. New team-based care models can be configured, calibrated and personalized around the specific and changing needs of patients, and clinical decision support tools can alert care teams to intervene to take preventive action.

The benefits span care paradigms; patients feel empowered in their healthcare, caregivers manage responsibilities with greater confidence, and providers use robust patient-generated data to provide more comprehensive patient care to guide their clinical decisions.

Advanced Medicine through Analytics. Future care systems will process and analyze vast amounts of data, including patient-generated data, to provide broader insights, diagnostic possibilities, and treatment options to advance medicine. Disruptive technologies based on smart sensors, artificial intelligence engines and augmented reality have the potential to improve the quality of care by reducing adverse events and significantly reducing disability and death.

Analytics and automation can also reduce administrative burdens, enabling care providers to focus less on administrative needs and more on interaction with patients. To maximize the value of these insights, it is critical to incorporate these analytics into healthcare workflows and adopt user-centered design principles.

At the individual level, these capabilities can translate into earlier and potentially more reliable diagnoses and better treatment options; at the broader population level, it can translate into faster data-driven insights for improved public health and policy decisions .

some important considerations

As we begin to design the systems of care of the future, it is important that they add up more than the sum of their parts. Technology has great potential to improve care, but it can also create a sense of distance between care providers and their patients.

In other words, not everything should be virtual. We must keep in mind the importance of maintaining human connections between care providers and patients, and appropriately choreograph face-to-face and virtual meetings.

A solution should be influenced less by the technology involved and more by the needs and challenges it is designed to address. Patients, providers, and staff need to remain at the heart of solution design decisions, and virtual care must be organically integrated into clinical and operational workflows—not an afterthought.

A clear vision and a roadmap for enterprise-wide integration are needed to seamlessly and safely integrate the right innovations into an adaptable, long-lasting care pathway.???

The vision for the future of healthcare will vary from institution to institution. But in any case, the common key to success is whether the agency makes integration a defining pillar of its modernization approach.