During the pandemic, I worked closely with chief nursing officers and healthcare technologists to implement virtual care solutions.
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Theres really no such thing as a future-proof piece of hardware or software.
(Does anyone still own a PalmPilot?)
All tech eventually becomes obsolete, which is one reason only about30%of digital transformations are actually successful.
So what is future-proofingreally?
Future-proofing is not about adopting any specific piece of technology.
after you snag that, you dont have to be stuck with any specific piece of tech forever.
A point solution is a unit; a platform has the ability to add on other components as necessary.
This is where I find many organizations falter.
During the pandemic, for instance, I saw healthcare organizationsusing iPadsfor virtual care to minimize patient contact.
While iPads work great as a stopgap measure, consumer technologies have limitations in a hospital setting.
FaceTime on an iPad is a point solution.
What hospitals really need is a virtual-carestrategyand a care deliveryplatformthat addresses the entire continuum of healthcare.
Deploying iPads is like installing a Ring doorbell when you really need a comprehensive, integrated security system.
Then they need the platform that best supports that strategy.
These concepts have direct parallels in the wider technology business space.
Future-proofing efforts must make work more efficient for employees.
But if you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.
The situation in healthcare is a little different, of course.
Nurses will take care of patients no matter what.
In a recentstudy, Gartner found that moderately stressed employees underperform by about 5%.
This costs the average company tens of millions each year.
In 2019, employees saw, on average, 12 changes in their day-to-day work.
Now consider how many changes they saw in 2020 and the massive amount of stress essential workers experienced.
The new way of doing thingshasto be better than the old way for your employees and your customers.
This is effective because employees and customers are better off with a hybrid of physical and virtual services.
At its core, future-proofing your business model means laying the groundwork for adaptability.
It means improving operations for your employees and your customers now and in the future.
