How Digital Transformation Can Improve Hospitals’ Operational Decisions

Many companies are interested in digital transformation using digital technologies to create or modify business processes, culture, and customer experiences to grow and stay ahead of the competition, and hospitals are no exception.

When people think about digital transformation in health care, they tend to focus on the idea of employing analytics to improve clinical decision-making. For example, with advances in computational science and machine learning, it’s become possible to deliver precision medicine, where therapies and interventions are tailored to each patient based on the individual’s genetic profile. Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are increasingly being used to improve the visual detection of signs of disease in fields such as radiology, dermatology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, and pathology.

However, focusing on leveraging digital transformation solely to improve clinical decision making would be a mistake. Based on our research and that of others as well as the burgeoning advances in how hospitals are using data and technology, we believe that digital transformation has a substantial role to play in optimizing hospitals’ operational decision-making, which in turn can lead to improvements in the quality and efficiency of care and patients’ access to it.

Here are four key areas where hospitals can leverage digital transformation to improve operational decision-making: patient flow, staffing, scheduling, and supply chain management.