Value-Driven Digital Transformation in Health and Medical Care

Abstract

Medical care has been patient centred from the origin and has evolved closely along the evolution of patient needs from the patient as individual to the patient as population, pursuing to provide the medical care of the highest quality standard, and including a public health approach. The holistic unification of patient individual health and patient population approaches through health and patient outcomes was predicted in ``Measuring Health Outcomes'' (Cairns, J. British Medical Journal;313:6) back in 1996. Advancements of information technologies deploying new data-driven services enabled the rising and supports development of novel multidimensional and holistic approaches to health care as: Value-based Health Care (VBHC) and the Quadruple Aim of healthcare. Considering value in VBHC as achieving the best outcomes from the perspective of the patient versus executing the care process needed to achieve these outcomes in the most optimal way. It is of paramount importance to identify and understand the processes to be improved; that will help us in order to be able to improve the outcomes. Digital health tools enable deployment of information services and data analysis technologies like the process mining one, which is precisely adequate for discovery, analysis and optimizing of the operational models underlying the actual care processes.Despite that the undergoing transformational change is pulled by global needs and driven by information technologies, data availability and data science, the journey ahead for digital health transformation is full of all sort of barriers: regulatory, clinical adoption, medical trust, and patient acceptance, requiring a holistic approach.