Bridging the voice of healthcare to digital transformation in practice – a holistic approach

Abstract

BackgroundDigital transformation is key for healthcare to meet future needs and expectations and compete equally with new actors on the market. Medical digital diagnosis tools and clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are improving and offer new opportunities. To introduce new technology in healthcare can however be a challenging mission, too often ending in failure, with excessive costs or the actual transformation work not being carried out at all. It is unclear how to drive the establishment to reach desired results in this environment, and how industrial experiences can be used to support healthcare.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to develop a holistic approach for introducing new information technology (IT), such as a CDSS, into a primary healthcare organization supported by industry best practices for digital transformation.MethodsThis qualitative study used a combined inductive and deductive method where the perceptions and beliefs of selected primary healthcare stakeholders were used as directions for developing an approach that could utilize existing industry best practices for digital transformation.ResultsA holistic healthcare-ified approach including 20 requirements was developed, that meet the needs of healthcare. The voice of healthcare was used as prism to healthcare-ify the industry practices and adapt it to match specific healthcare conditions. An example was provided showing how the research could be put into practice.ConclusionsThis study proposed a holistic approach, based on industry best practices, but adapted to healthcare using the voice of healthcare as a bridge, that may be used to introduce CDSS and other IT into a primary healthcare organization and step up the needed digitalization.