'Omnichannel' is the New Watchword as Big Tech, Retail Get Serious About Healthcare

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that were instituted to help control it have re-shaped every sector, and healthcare is no exception. But it isn’t only traditional providers and payers that have discovered the virtues of virtual care and are now exploring its best use cases.

New players that have been entering healthcare over the last few years – including big tech companies and big box retailers – have learned the same lessons, and are reshaping their care offerings toward what they’re calling an omnichannel approach, smartly combining in-person care, virtual care, care at home and care by mail.

At various sessions at the HLTH conference in Boston last week, they spoke about the need to meet consumers where they are in order to deliver valuable care.

“What I fundamentally believe is this: Too often I hear about how Americans just don’t engage in their health. That’s not the challenge of the individual, it’s a challenge of the system. If people aren’t engaging, you haven’t created the system to make them engage,” said Marcus Osbourne, SVP at Walmart Health. 

“These are people who do want to engage. They just don’t want to engage the way you want them to engage. So the omnichannel experience is about creating opportunities for them to engage the way they want to engage.”