Elaine Goodman, MD, MBA, Clinical Lead for Population Health Management at Mass General Brigham, talks about how the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to impact developments in digital health management going forward.
Elaine Goodman, MD, MBA, Clinical Lead for Population Health Management at Mass General Brigham, talks about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected developments in digital health management and how this should impact digital health going forward.
What are some lessons you learned during the COVID-19 pandemic that are important for the future of digital health management, outside of a pandemic?
Of the things we saw during the pandemic, one of the biggest was that large organizations can move quickly, right? I think we were all amazed at the things that we were able to accomplish that we weren’t necessarily able to do, perhaps for a matter of years, before the pandemic that was being done in weeks. So I think that for every organization, just look back and think, “What aspects of this do we want to keep and move forward?” Obviously, this pace is not sustainable for all the projects we want to do. But when we know something is the right thing to do, how can we leverage some version of that urgency or efficiency to actually move things forward?
I think the other thing that really stood out during the pandemic was [that] a lot of the technology that we used in the pandemic hasn’t changed – it was the same virtual visiting platform that we had the week before, but suddenly everyone was using it. I think this goes back, again, to the importance of how we describe and communicate the value of a technology for adoption by our staff and patients. It was the same technology, but it suddenly became very easy for patients and staff to understand why using it was in their best interest. And it doesn’t take a pandemic for us to do a better job of doing that with other things.
I think one of the lessons that, again, was true before the pandemic, but was really highlighted by the experience, was that we tend to underestimate how much effort we need to put into describing and communicating why we’re using a technology and why it’s a benefit. If we can do more with that, again, that will drive staff and patient engagement, which is really what you need to get to a place where technology is delivering value.
What is the incentive to continue developing health technology at the same speed and level?
We can’t expect the same speed of development that we had in the pandemic because, frankly, everyone needs to rest. It was too much right? But I think what’s going to move us forward is that we’ve just made a huge leap in general awareness and acceptability of bringing technology tools into the relationship with the healthcare system and the patient. What I think would have taken many years before for patients to understand and pick up on, now if they’ve ever had a virtual visit, it really changes the way they think about new technologies that will be released in the future. So I think part of what happened will make it easier to accept new technologies just because of the experience we all share now.
