“In virtual hospitals, service access channels should be both interconnected and interactive. The patient should be able to continue the process he started in any physical or virtual medium in another medium without interruption, and ultimately experience a single so-called journey.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes in the ways of doing business across all sectors and geographies that could only take decades. In this context, in the first six months of the pandemic, a quantum leap equal to at least seven years took place in terms of the digital organizational transformation of the sectors and the ratio of their digital or digitally supported products (1).
In fact, even before the pandemic, there was a strong desire on the part of both patients and healthcare professionals to facilitate the provision and delivery of healthcare services. However, this request could not be fulfilled due to the constraints mentioned in the previous parts of this article series. The pandemic has created a strong demand from internal and external customers to easily access or provide healthcare services and stay safe in the process (2). For example, radiologists preferred to report films remotely via telemedicine applications. Although the same demand existed on the part of pathology specialists, it could not be met by the sector since the infrastructure of this discipline was not as developed as radiology. However, now many health-tech companies, including Turkish companies, are developing and introducing noteworthy products to the market. Of course, the driving force of the market is not only due to the challenging security-related effects of the pandemic. Efficient use of scarce human resources will be important, especially in the expected increase in demand after the pandemic. After all, our most valuable and productive capital is still qualified manpower. In this context, radiology, pathology and laboratory etc. in wide geographies. centers, intensive care etc. Services can be controlled from a single center in terms of many clinical and operational aspects. In this context, there are even anecdotal cases where resuscitation was successfully managed remotely by the physician in charge (3). These are planned in our country and some of them are already implemented. This approach should not be considered only within the scope of the desire to access high technology. In sub-Saharan Africa, rural areas of China, etc., where the number and access of healthcare personnel is very limited. Digitalization can be lifesaving in different geographies.
However, all these arguments do not mean that there is no need for virtual service delivery in conditions where resources are not scarce. Because there is another very important driving force that encourages the provision of health services in the virtual environment. This means that patients are not brought to the hospital as much as possible. This is important, for example, for the elderly who need frequent but routine care but have difficulty accessing healthcare facilities. Although we have designed our processes around patient-centered healthcare delivery over the last two decades, patients still have to physically come to the hospital. However, we can think of this as multi-channel marketing and reach the patient through many tools, including virtual hospitals, and offer them the service in many different channels. But even in this case, we have to collect information about the patient and his/her journey in a way that is unobstructed and fully accessible throughout the patient’s entire journey. In other words, access channels must be both interconnected and interactive. The patient should be able to continue the process he/she started in one medium in another medium without interruption and eventually experience a single patient journey. Of course, with the increase in contact points, the number of data to be obtained increases, which necessitates the use of advanced analytics in the processing of data.
(1) McKinsey&Company Global Survey October 5, 2020.
(2) During the pandemic, virtual consultations of UAE residents via mobile applications increased fivefold (Source: UAE division, vHealth).
(3) This successful transaction took place in Mercy Virtual. Source: Katz, D.L. Is telemedicine the future of care? AARP The Magazine, January 26, 2018
