Creating the Digitally-Enabled Doctor

The accelerated use of digital health tools has put consumers in a virtual driver’s seat when it comes to navigating their care. They have more options than ever before to connect with providers of all kinds, even chatbots. They can generate their own health data, plug it into a variety of programs and get personalized advice on eating healthier and exercising more, not to mention being able to send real-time information to their care team.

What happens on the other end of that connection is just as important. There’s enormous upside for the digitally-enabled doctor, from being better equipped to meet population health and value-based care goals to making more informed decisions. And we can’t lose sight of the fourth element of the Quadruple Aim, which is to bring joy back to practicing medicine. Ultimately, the digitally-enabled physician should have a better overall work experience leading to a lessening of fatigue and burnout. But how the technology gets deployed is critically important. And if the long, painful experience with electronic medical records and their impact on workflow taught us anything, it’s that technology can’t be viewed in isolation or as an add on; it needs to be engrained in an organization’s overarching strategy.