Connected Health Trend Countdown: #9 The Connected Enterprise

On Tuesday we launched our Top 10 Trends Countdown with #10: M&A Meets Consumer Engagement. Today we reveal the next trend, which is:

Trend #9: The Connected Enterprise

As mentioned earlier this week, Connected Health is defined as the care provided to patients when they are not within the clinical care setting. Now I’m talking to you about enterprise collaboration. So, what does collaboration inside the walls of a healthcare organization have to do with providing better care outside of those hospital walls? Everything. Simply put, an efficiently run healthcare organization is the foundation upon which quality scores and better population health are built.

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Setting the Foundation for Enterprise Collaboration

Quality care at affordable cost is the industry’s holy grail. A lot must go right in order to reach this goal. The inner workings of this highly complex system rely upon communities of people that must work together in harmony towards a myriad of common tasks. This synchronized dance must oftentimes take place within the high stress environments that surround life or death decisions. Beyond providing care, clinicians need to wade through the mountains of medical research and data points that impact care decisions daily. Researchers need to find and figure out the facts and figures that impact public health. Within the organization, employees need to find the information they know exists among the applications, content, and knowledge workers grouped in different, often hidden, locations across the organization.

But we can take this impact on Connected Health a step further. Within the Connected Enterprise care and education take on fluid new forms that are not confined to geographic boundaries. Once upon a time a single expert would only be available to those with immediate access to this expert. Now experts are available to the world. I have been truly touched to hear stories of how enterprise collaboration is being used to save lives in a fashion not restricted by geographic boundary. In one case, a pediatric specialist saved the life of a young girl using an innovative surgical technique. Several months this surgeon was contacted about a patient across the nation that was suffering the same peril. Using video streaming protected by the secured infrastructure of an enterprise portal, the surgeon was able to lead the on the ground team, and the second child was saved as well.

Crowdsourcing Enterprise Success

Clinicians need to digest a lot of information daily in order to provide quality care. This mass of data is too much for every clinician to do on their own in parallel. Tools like enterprise social exist to help communities of people digest a lot of information quickly. Healthcare organizations view the benefits of internal collaboration as a way to take advantage of “crowdsourcing” to solicit input from thought leaders across the organization. Even better, it causes a dramatic decrease in the primary communication tool that is burying us all: Email.