“There is always more we can do to make our platform and services better,” said SimplePractice’s CEO and Co-founder Howard Spector.
This sums up the attitude of the following three healthtech companies. Never satisfied with the status quo, they all said they’re constantly pushing to evolve their technologies to make healthcare better for patients and the professionals assisting them.
These internal tech evolutions often reflect broader industry trends, like improving patient accessibility through the development of mobile apps and video communications. New products are also spun out of companies investigating what patients are asking for, like automated tools for scheduling appointments.
Spector and leaders at Renew Health and Well Health clued us in on the industry shifts they’re watching — as well as the upcoming projects they’re working on to keep them ahead of the game.
SimplePractice provides health and wellness professionals with a platform that allows them to manage their patient networks more effectively.
CEO and Co-founder Howard Spector discussed the importance of patients having seamless access to care, and said that implementing new mobile video communication is an increasingly viable way to do that.
What does the future of healthcare technology look like? What technologies specifically are driving the industry’s evolution?
I think the easier we can make access to information for professionals and their patients, the better. This can mean things like moving away from manual data-sharing between providers and moving toward patient access via a secure client portal and mobile apps.
Another important way technology is allowing better access is through telehealth. Using secure video technology allows people who live in rural areas to get help. It also provides continuity of care when circumstances arise that make it hard for individuals to see a professional.
We never settle.”
How do you ensure your company stays on the cutting-edge of healthtech? What new technologies or products are you incorporating into your work?
There is always more we can do to make our platform and services better for our customers. We never settle, and we work intentionally to have productive communication with our engaged community of customers to keep us on the right path. So while 'new' is important, it’s just as important to make certain that even the 'old' features are doing what they need to do to best serve our customers.
Well Health’s platform lets patients and their healthcare organizations communicate through text, phone, email and live-chat.
The service makes tasks like confirming insurance and viewing lab results more efficient, and CEO Guillaume de Zwirek said the company and the industry as a whole are doubling down to produce even more patient-focused efforts. Well Health’s teams tapped into a huge pool of data to evolve the platform’s appointment scheduling tool for patients.
What does the future of healthcare technology look like? What technologies specifically are driving the industry’s evolution?
Healthcare is following the lead of many other industries in moving toward providing concierge-like experiences. Concierge service used to be reserved for the elite but the rise of mobile, AI, the internet of things and many other technological advances has started to level the playing field.
For example, anyone can order a “personal driver” by calling an Uber or Lyft or benefit from a “travel planner” by texting a TripActions agent when a flight gets delayed. In healthcare, we’ll soon see things like personal device and smart-speaker data feeding back to physicians to predict disease. We’ll see prescriptions being delivered within the hour and in real-time, as well as asynchronous communication with medical teams available around the clock.
Healthcare is following the lead of many other industries in moving toward providing concierge-like experiences.”
How do you ensure your company stays on the cutting-edge of healthtech? What new technologies or products are you incorporating into your work?
We look to our patients. Our platform processes over 150 million communications per year. This data gives us clear signals on what we should prioritize to best improve the patient experience. In a recent example, we analyzed millions of patient interactions and developed an automated self-rescheduling workflow that surfaces alternate appointment times when a patient requests to cancel or reschedule their appointment.
CTO Leevar Williams said he’s working to help Renew Health’s engineers remain as efficient as possible as the company and industry evolve.
The leader at the prescription drug management platform said as his development team moves toward a containerized service architecture, they’re free to explore the use of new tech tools they believe will benefit their daily operations.
What does the future of healthcare technology look like? What technologies specifically are driving the industry’s evolution?
This is an industry where data is often fragmented and siloed within disparate systems. A lot of the transformation we’re seeing is due to companies leveraging cloud-compute and storage platforms to integrate data. They’re applying machine learning and other advanced analytics capabilities, at scale, to improve the patient experience.
I think the integration of real-time data streams, the broader adoption of communication standards for information exchange and automated interpretation of complex datasets will continue to drive the industry’s ability to provide better health outcomes for people.
We have been evaluating orchestration platforms like Rancher to simplify and automate our engineers’ day-to-day.”
How do you ensure your company stays on the cutting-edge of healthtech? What new technologies or products are you incorporating into your work?
We have been able to build a talented engineering team with a range of different backgrounds, skills and experiences. This diversity creates an environment that fosters constant learning and knowledge-sharing. As engineers encounter challenges or identify opportunities to extend our technology stack, they are also encouraged to evaluate new platforms and tools that have the potential to increase efficiency, reduce costs or otherwise improve our ability to serve our customers.
We are moving toward a fully containerized service architecture. We have been evaluating orchestration platforms like Rancher to simplify and automate our engineers’ day-to-day workflow.
