Digital Thought Leadership in Insurance "The New Health Journey: Value-Based Care, Prevention and Chronic Disease Management"

Trends in the Health Industry

The healthcare market, post-COVID-19, has undergone a major shift. With the pandemic's impact, technology use has been greatly boosted. This is also changing the way users and healthcare companies interact. A mindset change is taking place in both healthcare companies and their users; both are increasingly concerned with the concept of prevention, emphasizing the health and well-being habits of users, in order to avoid illness as much as possible, rather than treating them once they have developed.

In addition, with recent technological developments in healthcare, virtual assistance is gaining momentum, increasingly removing barriers in the sector. This is facilitating the entry of new players such as Tech Giants, retailers, and digital natives, which is making the sector much more competitive.

The most important change of paradigm, however, is that regarding the shift from a traditional fee-for-service model to a value-based model of care. The healthcare ecosystem now prioritizes the quality of services rather than their quantity, by tracking user outcomes. This trend leads to hyper-personalization, and population health, among other several axes to be taken care of.

New Routes Towards the Evolution of the Industry
NTT DATA's Insights

In this new panorama, with all the preventive and value-based focus of care, interoperability also moves towards real-time healthcare AND the importance of helping with chronic diseases also grows. Consequently, we are witnessing a marked shift in the weight of care activity towards these latter pathologies.

In this sense, one technology that insurers and healthcare companies are experimenting a lot with is Artificial Intelligence (AI), managing to coordinate and integrate large amounts of data.

In addition, there is a great need for this ecosystem to be better regulated, in order to provide better care for users. New policies not only ensure that treatments are carried out, but also that they are carried out on time.

Overall, NTT DATA has identified four main challenges that healthcare organizations need to focus their strategies on to take a place in this disrupted industry, all in a context of accelerated digitalization:

1. 1. Improve the quality of care under the new paradigms made possible by digitization, Stressing comprehensive and integrated care models, and both on population and personalized health.
2. 2. Deepen in the user experience and customer knowledge, without forgetting the key role of the professional. In our vision, the health customer is yet a great unknow, and real-time, actionable data needs to be implemented to improve their experience and health journey.
3. 3. Make truly effective digital and data-driven, scaling it up and integrating it in all areas of the healthcare value chain.
4. 4. Find the right spot in the new competitive scenario, prioritizing value-based healthcare and operational efficiency.

To address the challenges and trends in today's healthcare sector, NTT DATA has also come with some recommendations to help companies avoid being left behind in this new ecosystem by changing their approach with targeted interventions.

• Insurers should focus on developing and implementing tools to promote prevention, wellness, and healthy habits, for example with the help of virtual assistants. They should also encourage personalization and segmentation of users, focusing on the importance of chronic disease care.
• Consider digital, personal, and interoperable spaces where patients can make use of a single, dynamic, and bidirectional point of contact with the healthcare organization.
• Increase the offer of hybrid experiences (online/offline) to the patient, with a continuous and satisfactory end-to-end relationship (pre-care, care, post-care, and integrated care).
• Improve comprehensive remote care, ensuring better access to health services and greater user and professional satisfaction, through clinical information systems, Electronic Medical Records (EMR), and remote monitoring devices, which are also integrated with face-to-face activity.
• Transition towards digital architectures and data exchange to improve interoperability. Advancing towards the liquid hospital, ensuring the dynamic management of hospitalization areas, real-time monitoring of activity, and the care capacity of a multiplied network.
• Apply intelligent automation to optimize back-office operations, ensuring the quality of customer service. Bring improvements in all phases of the process: reception, intelligent data recognition, triage, processing, and payment.

Conclusions

The healthcare ecosystem is moving towards a new way of truly understanding healthcare, where users are increasingly aware of how they want their health managed. As a result, insurers along with all healthcare organizations must adapt to these new demands and meet users' expectations. They must not stop accelerating in the digital race, thus betting on virtual and technological services, while guaranteeing human and value-based care.

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