Healthcare is facing a long-term transformation. More people are living longer and more are living with chronic conditions, while many providers are struggling to meet demand and secure the right skills. This is not just about adding more resources, but about how care is organised and how existing expertise is used.
Digitalisation and automation can make a big difference. Digital ways of working make care more accessible for patients, reduce unnecessary administration and free up time for the tasks where healthcare professionals‘ expertise is truly needed.
But instead of being a catalyst, digital transformation can become an obstacle if it means adding a new digital system for every new need.
As healthcare has been digitalised, specialised solutions have emerged for almost every individual problem. One for digital contact. Another for booking and a third for the digital consultation. Yet another for forms, one for follow-up of a specific chronic condition and perhaps a separate AI solution for documentation.
Each solution may do its job well. The problem arises when they need to work together – and together make up the care the patient needs.
When every care need gets its own digital solution, the result risks being more integrations, more administration and new digital silos. Instead of making it possible to scale new ways of working, things become slower and more fragmented.
For the patient, care is not a series of products or systems either. Every step of care needs to connect: seeking help, being assessed, getting an appointment, preparing for a visit or treatment, communicating with the care team and receiving the right follow-up afterwards.
Nor is the work of healthcare professionals divided according to which digital products or systems the organisation has purchased. Information and tasks need to follow the patient through the process.
If digitalisation is to help meet healthcare’s capacity and accessibility challenges, new ways of working must be able to scale without digital complexity growing at the same time.
Specialised so-called point solutions have played an important role in the digitalisation of healthcare. They can solve well-defined problems quickly and well. But the more solutions that are introduced, the greater the need to connect them.
Each new solution can mean additional integrations, logins, interfaces, data transfers, contracts and workflows to manage. Data risks getting stuck in different parts of the system landscape, and staff may need to switch between several tools to manage one and the same patient journey.
Multiple separate solutions also make care less flexible. If the care provider wants to follow up another patient group digitally, automate preparations ahead of a treatment or offer self-service booking – does that require yet another system? Or can the organisation use the digital infrastructure already in place and build a new care flow?
A new care need should not have to mean a new system. That is a fundamental difference between building a landscape of separate solutions and working from a connected platform.
A connected care platform should not be confused with a large, monolithic IT system in which one vendor tries to solve every need. A modern platform is instead modular. It creates a shared digital foundation where functions and components can be combined and reused based on the patient journey to be supported.
This might include, for example:
Of course, not every patient needs every function. The point is that the care organisation can use the same building blocks for many different patient groups and processes – while data, activities and workflows stay connected throughout the care journey.
Let’s start from three different care needs. They could be three different patients – or the same person at different points in life.
One person seeks care for new symptoms and needs help understanding which level of care is right. Another is due to undergo planned surgery and needs to fill in forms, receive information at the right time, prepare for the procedure and be followed up afterwards. A third lives with a chronic condition and needs recurring follow-up, measurements and contact with healthcare when readings or symptoms change.
The needs are different, but many of the digital building blocks are the same: identifying yourself, submitting structured information, receiving personalised information or care guidance, communicating with the care team and booking or rebooking an appointment.
With a platform model, the organisation does not need to build three separate digital worlds. The same digital front door can lead to different care flows depending on who the patient is and what they need.
The platform model also changes the starting point for further digitalisation. Instead of asking „Which new product do we need?“, the organisation can ask „Which care flow do we want to create?“
A new or changed need does not have to mean a new standalone solution. Instead, a new flow can be built using the modules and components already in the platform.
Take a patient who is due to have planned knee surgery. Once the operation is booked, the patient can automatically receive the right information and tasks ahead of the procedure. Forms are sent at the right time, and the patient can confirm that they have understood the information and receive reminders about what needs to be done. If something changes, healthcare staff can pick it up before the day of surgery. After the treatment, the same care flow can continue with information about recovery, questions about how the patient is feeling, and follow-up.
For the patient, this creates a clearer and more coherent process. For the organisation, manual contacts and administrative steps can be automated.
And when the organisation wants to create a similar flow for another treatment, there is no need to start from scratch. The same components can be combined in a new way on the same platform.
This is how digital ways of working can be scaled to more parts of the organisation without every new use case also meaning another system to implement, integrate and maintain.
An important part of the platform philosophy concerns what the patient never sees.
When several standalone digital solutions have to work together, information needs to move between them and the core healthcare systems. This can lead to double data entry, manual transfers and a growing number of integrations to build and maintain.
When several care flows instead use the same platform, data and activities can carry over between functions. Integrations with, for example, the EHR can be reused across more processes, instead of each new use case requiring a new, separate connection.
This can mean fewer integrations to maintain, less duplicated work for staff and less risk of information getting stuck between systems.
The platform philosophy is therefore not primarily a technical question. Fewer systems, integrations and manual steps can reduce administration and free up time and capacity for healthcare’s core mission.
The technical case for a platform is about scalability, integrations and reuse. But ultimately, it is about how care works for the patient. A person can be an orthopaedic patient on Monday, seek care for an infection on Thursday and live with high blood pressure every day in between. The needs are different, but it is the same person and often the same care organisation.
That is why it is hard to justify a digital structure where patients themselves are expected to know which solution belongs to which diagnosis, clinic or process. A connected digital front door can instead start from the person and the situation: What do you need help with today?
From there, the patient can be guided to the right next step – whether that is self-care, a digital consultation with a nurse, a booked appointment at a physical clinic or a longer care process with recurring follow-up. And for someone living with a chronic condition, the digital contact can remain in the background for many years, contributing to continuity and peace of mind. Technology should be able to follow along as the patient’s needs change – rather than the patient having to switch digital worlds.
The value of a platform is not determined by how many functions it has, but by what happens when they can work together.
When information the patient has already provided can be used in the next step. When an answer can trigger an activity on the care side. When an activity can lead on to a booking. When a consultation can automatically be followed by the right follow-up at the right time.
And when the same way of working can be reused for a new patient group without the organisation having to introduce yet another standalone system.
That is the difference between digitalising individual steps and building a connected digital care model.
The next phase of healthcare digitalisation therefore needs to be less about adding more solutions – and more about making care connect.