Power the Future of Healthcare: Start With Innovation

In this article, we discuss:

• How AI Can Improve Every Aspect of Healthcare
• How Organizations Thrive Amidst Supply Chain Disruption
• How the Right Technology Adoption Can Reduce Costs and Improve Outcomes

Building a sense of community among our healthcare customers is a key way we support and enable customer success. We work to create educational opportunities for our customers to learn about emerging technologies, share industry best practices with their peers, and collaborate with us on opportunities for innovation.   

To that end, we hosted our Workday Healthcare Provider and Payor Summit earlier this fall. At the event, customers learned from Workday leaders how technology can enhance the future of healthcare. Below, we dive deeper into key takeaways from the summit.

How AI Can Improve Every Aspect of Healthcare

AI and ML have impacted all sectors this year. Joe Wilson, global chief technology officer at Workday, said, “AI applied ethically and responsibly can change lives.”

At Workday, our core value of integrity guides the ethical application of AI and ML to support customers. Wilson, addressing our customers at the Healthcare Summit, said, “We’re treating your data—yours, not ours—with the utmost respect. We’re doing so ethically so that we can give you the co-pilot you deserve to move faster and be better.”

John Kravitz, vice president and global head of healthcare at Workday, gave advice to customers on how to prepare for the future. “Implement new technology. Focus on agility and flexibility. Take work off your people, so they can focus on the strategic business problems.” 

Kravitz, with a background in clinical enterprise technology, said, “AI and ML help take the physician’s fingers off the keyboard, and allow them to interact more with patients.”

How Organizations Thrive Amidst Supply Chain Disruption

Supply chain challenges persist in our post-pandemic world, said Keith Lohkamp, senior director of industry strategy for healthcare at Workday. “We thought after coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic that supply chain management would go back to normal. But, we’re still seeing significant amounts of back orders and the need for substitutes.” 

To remedy challenges, Lohkamp added, “It starts with customers doing the basic block-building to give visibility into inventory. Monitoring orders and turning on capabilities to automate substitutes in the system is key.”

Based on discussions with our customers, Lohkamp shared, “Our customers are looking to drive greater efficiency and reduce cost. We encourage health systems to use demand-planning tools and match supply with demand to prevent surgery delays.” 

Lohkamp continued, “Our customers face continued supply chain disruptions which, when combined with rising costs, puts pressure on margins.”

Building a resilient framework and moving forward with efficiency remain priorities for customers, Lohkamp said, adding that to further insulate against risk, many customers are implementing frameworks to identify and tag the most critical products based on clinical and supply chain factors.

How the Right Technology Adoption Can Reduce Costs and Improve Outcomes

The healthcare industry has continued to transform. “Organizations that we think of as insurers or retailers are now moving into home care and primary care. New players are emerging while existing health systems are evolving via mergers and acquisitions,” said Lohkamp. “Now more than ever, it’s important to have a platform technology approach that allows for innovation.”

Kravtiz said, “Moving from best of breed to a unified platform can save a lot of money in the long-term. Not only in terms of the budget saved on the systems, but in terms of the overall costs of the organization.

“Think about the resources needed to customize an application—because the cost of integration, testing, and validation for an upgrade can have a huge financial impact,” Kravtiz noted, adding that having an up-to-date platform can help reduce and optimize those costs. 

Learn how healthcare organizations are using technology to improve agility and better support patient care. Read this report.