Evidence and Measuring Digital Health Outcomes
Evidence and Measuring Digital Health Outcomes
By Keith Nurcombe
Keith Nurcombe has worked in healthcare for over twenty years spending the last few years working with businesses in the health and technology space , most recently building O2 Health where he was Managing Director until the end of 2012 , since then he has been providing consultancy services to businesses .
The art of measuring outcomes is a challenge for all areas of the healthcare community both in business but also in wider care delivery models .
Healthcare evidence and outcomes is a really complicated process and often very difficult to find your way through . This is often compounded with the belief that all of this needs to be agreed and worked out in advance i . e . before you start anything - hence delaying the whole project and often resulting in some projects not happening at all .
Lots of really good work has been done to date in the digital world of healthcare when it comes to trying to make sure that we have the kind of outcomes that healthcare providers and payers want to see .
So why do we need to measure and why outcomes ?
There has been a very high level of focus for many years on outcomes in the healthcare word for all the right reasons , after all this is about patients and their health and wellbeing . So , why do we find ourselves in a place where providers and payers seem to have set the bench mark for success even higher for digital health ? I have some views as to why this is , and actually I think we should set our benchmark very high .
Patient data - people are very sensitive about permissions , who owns what , and who has access to what , in the data chain when it involves patients and clinical data . This is compounded when data moves out of clinician control .
Digital programs and technology are still often seen as slightly frightening concepts and when people don ’ t really understand it they can feel the need to place extra steps , or extra security , in a process to feel happy .
Digital healthcare is defining new operating models and new ways of working . This means clinicians and patients need to find their way through new processes , and as this may also involve less face-to-face contact then this can often lead to further concerns for patients but especially clinicians .
I think there are some basic rules to follow in terms of trying to get the best outcomes for digital healthcare going forward :
1 . Always set clear objectives and criteria for your projects - clarity at the beginning will allow better outcome measurement at points throughout and at the end of the process .
2 . Think about baseline data before beginning the project - What do you need ? What are you looking to prove or achieve and therefore what do you need in order to judge the success and outcomes at the end of the process ? Knowing this will give you an edge if you can get baseline data upon which it is possible to judge and draw conclusions from .
3 . Always look at the patient and user outcomes as much as you look at the clinical outcomes - It is always very tempting to be driven down the route of everything clinical when actually you need to measure the changes for the patient and the user as much , if not more , in the digital healthcare world moving forward .
Let ' s be clear evidence is king and ROI for the payer , provider and user are all critical for success as well . We need to learn to be master of all in terms of evidence and outcomes if we are going to compete with the old fashioned non digital ways of doing things involving paper and data collection from trials etc .
It ' s here to stay lets embrace it ! •
22
April / May 2016