HOW EY IS MAKING PUBLIC HEALTHCARE FUTUREPROOF
Effective public health care is the backbone of our civilization — and it ’ s under threat . Global consultancy firm EY is at the heart of strategies to bring health care into the digital age . Its work in Canada is proving to be a blueprint for global change .
Digital integration and the technology driving it are the key to ensuring health care has a future . As the Health Care team at EY explains , it is bringing together central government funding , corporate providers and passionate health care professionals to ensure public health care is available and effective for all . John Bethel heads up EY ’ s Health Care team in Canada . He says EY is striving to transform the system into a different way of caring for people . “ Care is getting more personalised through greater digitization ,” he says . “ This digital migration is moving many health care functions out of the hospitals , enabling hospital systems to focus on more complex care .”
Bethel says health systems — much like banking , retail , travel and just about everything else in today ’ s world — face the same expectations from their user to engage quickly and seamlessly and to provide digital conveniences like scheduling appointments and sharing personal health data with physicians . Technology has also created a huge opportunity for building new capacity .
“ People are living longer , but also facing more complex health issues ” Bethel says . “ This means the health care systems are dealing with far more comorbidity issues alongside the growth of conditions associated with aging , such as dementia .” This mixture of pressures on the system is creating a “ convergence ” in health care according to Bethel . “ We are now seeing all kinds of ‘ non-industry ’ players enter our system and become part of the health care offering . It is technology that ’ s made this possible .” Finally , Bethel says the big game-changer was the pandemic . ” COVID forced us to change the way we deliver care overnight .”
Vinna Vong , senior manager in EY ’ s Technology Transformation and national Health Care practice , says none of this matters if the public doesn ’ t trust the services on offer . ” To implement and deploy technology , AI and machine learning in a way that is effective and efficient , you must have trust at the core .”
Anand Shah is a partner in EY ’ s Health Care practice based in Toronto . He says the way EY is collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data is providing the fuel to drive change . “ Smart analytics is enabling health care to apply data in different and effective ways ,” he says . “ We can use data to define and hone true population health management to truly understand what our populations need and therefore to shape our services in a more proactive and sustainable way .”
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