McKinsey: Strategic Actions and Best Practices for Exploring the Road to Scaling Global Smart Healthcare

With the advancement of global digital transformation, e-health technology is changing the healthcare systems of various countries. In its article 'Scaling National Smart Healthcare: Best Practices from Around the World,' McKinsey provides an in-depth analysis of the successful experiences of countries around the world in promoting smart healthcare solutions. This article not only reveals the challenges in promoting smart healthcare, but also provides specific strategic actions and best practices for other countries to learn from.

The potential and challenges of smart healthcare

The application of smart healthcare technology has brought enormous potential for improving medical quality, reducing costs, and enhancing the experience of patients and healthcare professionals. According to McKinsey's analysis, fully utilizing digital healthcare technology can save 8% to 12% of healthcare expenditures in various countries. However, as pointed out in the article, the implementation process of smart healthcare is complex and diverse, involving not only technology but also challenges such as low user acceptance, difficult system integration, data privacy and security.

Despite investing significant resources globally, many countries still struggle to achieve the expected penetration rate of smart healthcare solutions. For example, since the implementation of the Smart Healthcare Record System (EHR) in Germany in 2021, less than 1.5% of patient records have been digitized, and the actual usage rate by healthcare workers is as low as 2% to 3%. These realities reflect the practical problems that exist in the process of popularizing smart healthcare.

Drawing wisdom from global experience: McKinsey's three stage strategic actions and national practices

McKinsey divides the promotion process of smart healthcare into three main stages: the initial stage, the expansion stage, and the efficiency improvement stage. Each stage has targeted strategic actions and successful cases from different countries.

1. Initial stage: Attract users and establish trust

In the early stages of promoting smart healthcare solutions, the key is to attract patients and healthcare professionals, and lower the threshold for use by building trust. McKinsey recommends the following strategic actions and provides specific practices in several countries:

Clarify use cases and values: demonstrate how electronic health solutions can solve specific problems and emphasize the practical benefits they bring.

Clarify use cases and values: demonstrate how electronic health solutions can solve specific problems and emphasize the practical benefits they bring.

Lowering entry barriers: By simplifying the registration process, providing financial incentives (such as compensation or reimbursement), and adopting trust building measures, we help users more easily adopt new technologies.

Denmark: The Danish government mandates the integration of patient health data into the national health portal website sundhed.dk and requires all healthcare workers to use the system. At the same time, Denmark also offers economic incentives, such as providing € 1500 annually for smart healthcare to doctors and prioritizing reimbursement for doctors who access the national healthcare infrastructure. These measures have effectively lowered the threshold for medical staff to use and gradually increased the adoption rate of the system.

2. Expansion phase: Promote frequent use and system integration

After reaching a certain user base, the key task is to encourage continuous use and ensure seamless integration between different smart healthcare solutions. The following are strategic actions recommended by McKinsey and specific practices in various countries:

System integration: Ensure that electronic health solutions can seamlessly integrate with existing medical IT systems, improving user experience and system utilization.

Finland: Through the Kanta service platform, Finland has integrated multiple services such as medical records and prescription management. This platform not only facilitates the daily work of doctors, but also reduces tedious administrative operations. For example, before Kanta was launched, doctors needed to frequently switch systems to obtain patient information and handle daily affairs. Through Kanta's integration, doctors can complete all operations on one platform, greatly improving work efficiency.

User centered design: Design user centered solutions that are easy to use and can be integrated into users' daily lives.

Iceland: Iceland's smart healthcare system Saga has automatically integrated with the existing IT systems of healthcare workers, eliminating the need for them to switch between different applications or manually input data. This design greatly simplifies the user experience and improves the utilization rate of smart medical records. Currently, over 90% of healthcare workers in Iceland are using this system.

High transaction volume applications: Promote high transaction volume digital healthcare applications such as electronic prescriptions, and further drive overall system utilization through integration with other electronic health solutions.

Estonia: Since the introduction of electronic prescriptions in 2010 and the integration of their data with the national smart healthcare record system, the usage rate of Estonia's smart healthcare system has significantly increased. Today, almost all prescriptions in Estonia are digitized, and 99% of medical data is captured in smart healthcare record systems. In addition, the drug interaction alert service can check medical interactions in electronic prescription data and alert healthcare workers when there are potential issues. This feature has become a part of the daily work of Estonian doctors.

3. Efficiency Enhancement Stage: Stimulating Innovation and Ecosystem Growth

When smart healthcare solutions reach widespread adoption, McKinsey recommends taking further action to maximize their benefits and drive the growth of the entire digital health ecosystem. The following are strategic actions recommended by McKinsey and specific practices in various countries:

Data driven innovation: By establishing national level data centers and open API platforms, promoting the participation of third-party developers, injecting innovative vitality into electronic health systems.

Israel: Israel's National Health Information Exchange Platform (NHIE) collects information from hospitals, clinics, and health insurance companies

The company provides a large amount of health data and allows approved researchers, startups, and organizations to access this data for free. For example, a startup company has developed an AI driven medical scan reader using NHIE data that can detect early signs of cancer. By accessing Israel's vast and diverse health data, this solution is able to train algorithms on large-scale datasets, thereby improving the accuracy and reliability of scanning.

Expand service scope: Collaborate with third parties to expand the service scope of electronic health solutions, enhance user engagement, and enhance the overall value of the system.

Denmark: Denmark has opened up its smart healthcare infrastructure to third parties, promoting competition and innovation among health technology companies. The open API platform allows third-party developers to easily connect to the system and develop new services. This openness not only drives innovation, but also enhances the value of the system and user engagement by providing more services.

Support policy formulation and population health management: Utilize digital medical data for population health management and central analysis, optimize medical resource allocation, and improve the quality of medical services.

Chicago: Chicago's Intelligent Data Project showcases how predictive analytics can be used to support public health decision-making. For example, the Chicago Department of Public Health uses predictive models to identify high-risk households with lead poisoning and monitor safety violations in food facilities. These models utilize publicly available data for preventive interventions to help protect public health.

Mindray Insight: Customized Strategy and Continuous Improvement

This article by McKinsey provides a highly valuable strategic blueprint for the promotion of smart healthcare worldwide. However, when applying these strategies, countries need to make customized adjustments based on their own medical system characteristics, technological infrastructure, cultural background, and other factors. Different national conditions determine that even successful experiences need to be localized to achieve optimal effects.

In the future, the development of smart healthcare will increasingly rely on improving user experience and system interoperability. Through rational design and continuous improvement, smart healthcare solutions can not only improve patients' health levels, but also bring profound changes to the global healthcare system.

http://www.cn-witmed.com/list/9/14315.html