Podcast transcript: The age of ‘Health Experience’

Hello and welcome to the first and introductory episode of our EY Health Sciences and Wellness Experience podcast series. In this series, we are excited to explore the emerging and much needed age of “Health Experience.”

The health sciences and wellness industry has never been as “front and center” in our lives as it has been in this last year. As all of us, worldwide, ride the various waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, our health sciences and wellness industry has taken the lead in giving care to those who have needed it most. We have also seen a monumental collaborative R&D effort – at a scale never witnessed before – that has resulted in the creation and delivery of multiple approved vaccines to combat the virus.

At the same time, the industry itself has experienced rapid “virtualization” at both a primary and secondary care level. Arguably a change that is long overdue. The driving forces that have made it imperative for an aging industry to adapt have long been recognized: from spiraling health costs and global disease burdens, to greater consumer expectations and the rapid march of technological innovation. The pandemic added urgency and accelerated the process of change, but the underlying driving forces remain the same. Moreover, the industry’s evolution is by no means complete: the vision for future “smart health” systems remains unrealized.

Nevertheless, in the months since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, we have seen a step change in how care is delivered. We’ve seen rapid acceptance and thus adoption by physicians and patients alike of technologies to support virtual care. This has happened at a pace and universal scale not ever seen before. Having had a taste of virtual care, in the future patients and providers will want more: they will demand additional integrated services that provide a more personalized and convenient health experience.

Digital platforms that have become leaders in their respective industries, such as Amazon, Airbnb, Netflix and Uber, all share certain key characteristics: they all offer convenience, seamless and transparent access to their services, data vast range of content or service options to select from, and some degree of personalization and even prediction of personal choices. These characteristics appear as constants across the different industries, and learning from their success will be key to building a better user experience in health care. Organizations need to target the development of smart health systems that can offer a health experience as efficient, convenient and personalized as those enjoyed by consumers in other areas of their lives.

In these other industries, the ability to use data is key to creating the enhanced experience. As we know, there is an ongoing health data explosion. Arguably, in the future, medicine will no longer be a clinical science supported by data, but rather a data science supported by clinicians. So, unlocking the power within data will be critical to delivering the new smart health systems desired. Linking together technologies as diverse as genomics, miniaturized sensors (either inside us or on us), 5G, blockchain and artificial intelligence can allow medical and real-world data (both clinical and non-clinical) to be gathered, shared and used to make health decisions. This will give companies the opportunity to make care more connected, customized and convenient.

COVID-19 has also accelerated the move toward care delivery outside the four walls of a traditional health system. But to make a real and permanent change in how care is delivered, companies must address the new demands of patients and care providers.

Meeting these increased expectations will mean expanding the traditional definitions of innovation in health care, which historically have focused on the safety, effectiveness or efficiency of care. Of course, these remain important, but patients and providers alike now demand a more seamless health experience delivered where and when it is wanted.

Companies have an opportunity to seize this inflexion point, because the reality (as we have seen with other industries) is that products or services alone, no matter how strong, technically will not be enough in future.

Welcome to the age of “Health Experience.”

In future episodes of this podcast series, we will explore the various trends that are reshaping the health sciences and wellness industry and driving the evolution of the smart health systems of the future that can deliver this improved Health Experience. It’s not only health providers and payors who need to focus on this challenge: we also encourage all biopharmas and medtech companies to look beyond selling just a product or service. Instead they should look in the future to engage with their users across the health care value chain, whether that be physicians or patients, and deliver to them not just a better care product or care service but a better care experience.

As more companies increasingly take responsibility for improving the Health Experience, they will also have the opportunity to build richer and more meaningful relationships with all in the value chain. These relationships will no doubt strengthen customer loyalties and at the same time also build trust.

Ultimately, all companies in this industry need to focus on a fundamental belief or hypothesis: Future Value in Health lies in Unlocking the power of data to deliver Health Experience. Organizations’ success will increasingly be measured both by the quality of outcomes that they can deliver and the level of personalization they can achieve. To deliver in these areas, they need to connect data better, combine data sets more comprehensively and share the insights generated from Al and analytics back into a wider network, enabling collaboration at a vast scale to accelerate learning and innovation. Organizations that can take the lead in doing this will be best placed to integrate the physical and the virtual, enable seamless data exchange, and thus offer the convenient, transparent, personal and predictive Health Experience of the future. Any organization that wants to remain relevant in the age of Health Experience needs to ask itself: when experience drives the new health economy, when, how and where do you fit?