Becker's Hospital Review

25 INNOVATION US consumer experience drops, but top 5% of brands win with this strategy By Georgina Gonzalez T he best brands are focusing on creating positive emotional ex- periences for their customers, as other organizations struggle to keep up in 2022, according to a June 6 report from market research firm Forrester. More than 200 brands across 13 industries had their 2022 customer experience services analyzed by experts at Forrester, which were then compiled to create customer experience scores. e report revealed that overall customer experience decreased to pre-pandemic levels, with 40 brands experiencing significant score decreases. is reversed gains in customer experience scores that were made in 2021. However, the top 5 percent of brands in the index managed to main- tain their customer experience scores. A large part of their success came down to providing an emotionally strong customer experience, with these brands providing significantly more emotionally positive experiences than others. More than a quarter of these elite brands provided emotionally positive experiences for their consumers, as op- posed to 11 percent overall. n Where tech innovation is needed most in healthcare By Laura Dyrda H ealthcare has faced rapid change in the last few years amid the pandemic, and digital transforma- tion is not slowing down. Sara Vaezy, executive vice president and chief digital offi- cer at Renton, Wash.-based Providence, and Brad Reimer, CIO of Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, S.D., discussed the areas of healthcare primed for disruption on the "Becker's Healthcare Digital Health + Health IT Podcast." Note: Responses have been edited lightly for clarity. Question: What areas of healthcare are most in need of disruption and digital transformation today? Brad Reimer: There's a lot evolving in healthcare right now, from AI to the Internet of Medical Things, to virtual health and consumerized healthcare. There's so many buzzwords out there, but the largest opportunity and the common currency across all of those is data. It's probably one of the most challenging areas to address as well because we're trying to figure out how to prepare the data ecosystem. I'm talking about it in the largest sense: What's the data eco- system need to look like for this generation of healthcare solutions? What is the amount and importance of data that's being created and consumed outside the EMRs is growing exponentially, as everybody knows. All those sys- tems, in a utopian world, need to work in concert with each other to really gain the benefit of improving patient quality care, the patient experience and the provider experience. I believe that data is key for doing that, and whether you're talking about it as data governance, deidentification of data accessibility, interoperability, AI, machine learning, you name it: data just is that lifeblood to the future of dig- ital health in my mind. Providing a modern and adaptable data ecosystem is incredibly important as a huge need and opportunity for organizations to partner with health systems, universities and the third-party vendor market. If we can crack the nut on how we build a modern data eco- system for healthcare, it will truly revolutionize healthcare for our patients and our communities. Sara Vaezy: Our healthcare system is so complex and dif- ficult to navigate and understand, and the infrastructure is very antiquated. The business models are challenging and the operations are very convoluted. I think it's hard to point to something that doesn't require rethinking and modern- ization, and perhaps disruption as well. There is a lot of strategic value in doubling down on how we think about disruption as anything that is consumer facing because consumers have expectations. We've been talking about this for a long time; it isn't a novel concept. But consum- er expectations are more advanced [and influence] where they get their care. There is also a lot of activity in the market for new types of nontraditional players coming in and the whole nature of how care is delivered is changing. There are lots of con- sumer-facing offerings out there. It's really important to continue to innovate aggressively around that domain and figure out ways by which we can remain relevant for con- sumers. n

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