As healthcare business leaders strategize for the post-pandemic world, one thing is evident: Digital transformation has just begun.

In fact, 81% of healthcare executives say the pace of digital transformation for their organization is accelerating, and 93% report that they are innovating with a sense of urgency and call to action this year, according to the Accenture Digital Health Technology Vision 2021 report.

"We are in a radically changing world marked by rapidly evolving healthcare consumer expectations, location-agnostic care needs, and a rise in new ecosystem partnerships that are accelerating the industry several years forward," Dr. Kaveh Safavi, a senior managing director in Accenture's Global Health practice and one of the authors of the report, said in a statement.

The industry has accepted that digital is here to stay, with 87% of executives saying their organization's business and technology strategies are becoming inseparable.

But even so, Accenture has identified five emerging trends that companies will need to address in the coming years to master digital transformation. The company combined its own insights with survey results from 399 healthcare executives across six countries to come up with the trends.

"The executive leaders of today and tomorrow will be those who can swiftly respond to a healthcare future that places the human at the heart of everything they do and prioritize technology innovation at the same time," Safavi said.

WHAT’S THE IMPACT?

The first trend that organizations need to be aware of in order to remain competitive moving forward is a strategically stacked technology infrastructure, according to the report.

“In this new era for healthcare, technology is no longer one-size-fits-all,” the authors said in the report. “There are more technology choices than ever and the selections that an organization makes can define its value proposition today and tomorrow.”

The report suggests investing in core, scalable and flexible technologies such as cloud, microservice APIs and analytics to get a competitive edge. At the same time, it suggests that organizations should prioritize data privacy and ethical designs, including bias mitigation, as they build their technology architectures.

One specific technology that a quarter of healthcare executives report experimenting with is digital twins, such as IoT, data streaming and 5G.

“The mirrored world will allow healthcare leaders to bring data and intelligence together at unprecedented scales; ask and answer big-picture questions critical to their survival; and reimagine how they operate, collaborate and innovate,” the authors said.

Whether digital twins are deployed in a clinical setting to model future scenarios or on the business side to improve operational efficiency, Accenture emphasizes the importance of a solid data foundation for them to be effective.

Another trend is the ability of emerging technologies, such as natural language processing, low-code platforms and robotic process automation, to democratize technology and empower people across organizations.

Through technical training of these tools, the workforce can be given the capacity to optimize their work, fix their own pain points and innovate for the entire organization, the report says.

“This doesn’t mean turning everyone into an engineer, but rather giving them access to new tools and enabling them to think like technologists and solve problems with technology that is easy to understand and program.”

In addition to empowering their workforce through technical training, organizations can achieve further advantages by utilizing remote work, according to the report. Nearly 90% of healthcare executives believe that having a remote workforce opens up the market for difficult-to-find talent and expands the competition for talent among organizations.

While some areas of healthcare must be conducted in a clinical setting, there are many roles that could be improved with flexible working requirements, especially when aided with digital tools that can foster working cultures anywhere, the report says.

The final trend builds off the multiparty collaborations that utilized shared data platforms throughout the pandemic.

“When you’re better able to transact, share data and shift between partners seamlessly and securely, you have an advantage in driving industry-level change that enables better care for people,” the authors said.

As organizations begin looking for new partnerships, the report suggests reviewing the hybrid solutions that worked during the pandemic, creating a team to scan prominent multiparty systems emerging in healthcare and communicating with industry players to evaluate the need and impacts of a multiparty system.

THE LARGER TREND

The pandemic led to unprecedented growth within digital health, and a number of accelerator programs have launched to keep the momentum going.

One, called PharmStars, is trying to get pharma and digital health companies on the same page to foster collaborations and innovation.

The KidsX Accelerator program launched last year to fuel the development of digital health solutions in pediatrics, a historically overlooked area.

Amazon Web Services is also lending its support by creating a new accelerator aimed at the digital health space that will give 10 startups operating in the U.S. a four-week crash course in technical training and business development, and includes a mentorship component.