There are times in which it’s wise to think small. Creating a digital health platform is not one of those times, according to Aaron Martin and Sara Vaezy.

It was one of many areas covered in 2022 Digital Predictions, which was published by Providence Ventures earlier this year. “We expect a platforming of digital health solutions — moving digital efforts from execution of tactical point solutions to development of strategic digital infrastructure within the health system,” the authors wrote.

It’s a trend Martin has already noticed at Providence, where he served as Chief Digital Officer for nearly six years before recently announcing his return to Amazon. “If you only tell someone like me the small story” — for example, a solution that focuses specifically on appointment scheduling — “I’m not interested, because I don’t want to have a point solution forever. I want to know where it’s going.”

In the report, he and Vaezy (Chief of Digital & Growth Strategy at Providence) shared insights on what they believe is coming down the digital pike, based on conversations with leaders from Providence and other organizations, as well as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Recently, they spoke with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor of healthsystemCIO, about their key findings — particularly around the workforce crisis; the use cases for artificial intelligence that they believe can be a valuable assist to clinicians; and how technology can be leveraged to help physicians use their judgement.

Key Takeaways:

* For Providence Digital Innovation Group, publishing the Digital Predictions report “is a way of putting our thoughts out there, getting the industry to react to it, and gathering situational awareness.”

* One of the key findings? “The workforce crisis is front and center — that is by far the biggest challenge we’re seeing right now as a health system.”

* Getting a digital platform up and running is important, but without a plan to engage between episodes of care, organizations open themselves up to “becoming a very sophisticated price taker in the market.”

* What other industries often get wrong when trying to enter the healthcare space is that “it’s not just the cost of the technology. It’s the cost of implementing it and reimplanting it.”

* When leveraged properly, AI has the potential to become a true asset to clinicians by taking on the “boring, repetitive tasks” that can lead to burnout.

Q&A with Aaron Martin and Sara Vaezy of Providence

Gamble: Can you start by telling us how the report came about?

Martin: We do this every year. We also publish a lot of thought pieces around what we’re seeing in the market. Particularly during Covid, we published a lot of content around our thesis of where things are headed.

The reason why we do this is that on the health system side, we’re regionally competitive. We can share a lot of information, because of the 200 or so large health systems, we don’t compete with the vast majority. It’s a way of putting our thoughts out there, getting the industry to react to it, and gathering situational awareness — that type of thing. This is much more of a forward-looking version of that. Sara and I always say that predictions are always combinations of things you’re actually predicting and things you’re actually working on. It’s a little bit of both.

 

Guerra: That’s interesting. Can you talk about the process and how you gather information?

Martin: It’s a lot of conversations with our internal constituencies and with industry experts and other health systems. We speak with two to three health systems a week, just trading notes and understanding what’s going on. Sarah, what would you add?

Vaezy: We do this on a continuous basis. We’ll do a refresh,