During the pandemic, more people realised they wanted to manage their own health and wellness. However, they can't do this alone. 

Future health systems must "shift towards a more outcome-focused, equitable health system to ensure every person everywhere has access to care to realise their full health potential," said Dr Anne Snowdon, Chief Scientific Research Officer at HIMSS Analytics, during her presentation at HIMSS22 APAC.

In the keynote session, "Digital Health Transformation as a Strategy to Advance Equity in Global Health Systems," Dr Snowdon said "meaningful digital connectivity with care teams" will help build health literacy and empower patients to make data-driven decisions about their health. 

Personalising care delivery

Building digitally enabled care models has become imperative to help the different segments of the population achieve their expected health outcomes.

However, there is no one size fits all care model. A model that works for the senior population may not work for the younger patient groups. 

"Personalising care delivery to the unique needs and life circumstances of our population segments becomes a critical path toward a much more high-performing digital health ecosystem," Dr Snowdon said.

Getting there

But how does a health system get to that stage where they are able to personalise care delivery? 

First, they have to measure their progress toward digital maturity, Dr Snowdon said. 

She suggested the HIMSS' Digital Health Indicator (DHI), an online tool which measures a health organisation's progress in digital health transformation in four dimensions: governance and workforce, predictive analytics, interoperability, and person-enabled health.

"It gives you a line of sight to where your digital strengths are, how do you leverage and mobilise those digital strengths to advance and strengthen that much further. That assessment of your digital health ecosystem now helps you understand what are the strategic roadmaps you need to advance and strengthen your progress to date. It now creates your strategic path forward," Dr Snowdon further explained.

Digitally mature organisations – those who have scored higher than 300 out of 400 in the DHI – have already moved on from a react-and-respond strategy to predict-and-act footing in addressing emerging health risks. Dr Snowdon also shared that based on their research, those organisations were also superior in terms of productivity and patient experience compared to other health organisations.

"What success looks like in digital health is being able to personalise care to the very unique circumstances of every individual and mapping the health and wellness goals each individual wants to achieve. It's no longer just following the clinical pathway; it's how those clinical pathways now help individuals to manage their health conditions and move towards achieving their personal health goals rather than the goals health systems tend to prescribe," she said.

Achieving equity

Being able to personalise care to target sectors in the population also means closing the gap in care access. But how does one get there?

"The only way we are going to be able to achieve equity is [by] understanding what outcomes we are achieving for whom; who's achieving great outcomes; how do we learn from that; and who is not achieving those outcomes. So that for those who are not achieving outcomes, we can be much more agile and pivot and personalise care delivery to meet the needs of everyone everywhere," Dr Snowdon said.

Attaining equity is not just about digitising the health system. "This is about reimagining and enabling new digitally enabled models of care delivery that don't wait for the patient to come to the system, but they actually enable the system to go to them wherever they happen to be," she concluded.