Consumer Directed Health to Social Media…’Consumerism’ Has Become the Undeniable Force in Healthcare

Healthcare can no longer deny nor ignore the importance of social media.  As a communication platform, it’s being used to educate, engage and empower consumers about topics ranging from legislation, hospital rankings, and ER wait times, to patient satisfaction, chronic illness management and health improvement.  Collaborative applications around seeking, sorting, assessing and ranking health information and experience have become part of our connected culture.

As “consumerism” increasingly impacts the healthcare landscape – payers, providers and other healthcare stakeholders are investing in technologies ranging from collaboration and contact center tools, to next generation video and self service platforms.  Consumerism is forcing these organizations to change their cultural barriers to how customer interactions need to be supported, and the pace of legislative mandates is exposing the healthcare information systems that can’t nimbly react to creating new products, or support online conversations.

Blogger Ed Bennet tracks 1,188 hospitals which are proving their seriousness about social media usage as they update:

• 548 YouTube Channels
• 1018 Facebook pages
• 788 Twitter Accounts
• 458 LinkedIn Accounts
• 913 Foursquare
• 137 Blogs

The impact of social media in healthcare goes beyond just an inexpensive channel that targets consumers.  Social media is fundamentally changing how payers, providers, and healthcare stakeholders manage their brand and influence purchasing decisions.

• For payers its managing customer service touch points through insurance exchanges, one of the few ways for them to maintain loyalty.

• For providers its connecting care providers with patients and is no longer about a gadget or app, but for measurable opportunities to share knowledge, build loyalty and improve processes that can influence how they manage care and patient relationships.

• For other healthcare stakeholders it’s supporting their brand and customer interactions with thoughtful, engaged support allowing for the ability to listen in on conversations already occurring about the industry, products, news, issues, etc.

Social media is a powerful source of information for consumers, and an equally powerful communication channel for providers of health information and support services.  For payers, providers and other healthcare stakeholders, TripleTree considers social media the lowest cost enabler of consumerism with a technical heritage linking it to cloud-based CRM and collaboration platforms.  In addition, social media is a cornerstone for marketing and branding initiatives in many industries.   With social media in healthcare, the old models for marketing, sales and service have been transformed.

Let us know what you think.

Chris Hoffmann

Chris Hoffmann is a Senior Director at TripleTree covering Cloud, SaaS and enterprise applications and specializes in CRM, loyalty and collaboration solutions across numerous industries. Follow Chris on Twitter or e-mail him at choffmann@triple-tree.com.

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Microsoft follows Google’s Lead and Exits Healthcare

Yesterday, Microsoft announced a new joint venture with GE where both organizations would transfer significant healthcare software technology into a new company led by GE health care executive Michael Simpson. This new company will be based in the Redmond area and have more than 700 employees dedicated to HCIT solutions.

A few months back, Microsoft sold its EMR (Amalga HIS) to Orion and via this announcement,  is transferring two of its three remaining healthcare assets – Amalga and Sentillion – into the JV.. Curiously, Microsoft is hanging onto HealthVault, its personal health record (PHR) suite.

It is hard to grasp why Microsoft would jettison its “crown jewel” HCIT and clinical solutions into the JV and say goodbye to most of its healthcare team (including top exec Peter Neupert (retiring)), while apparently remaining content to simply sell its horizontal platform and servers into health care settings.  (We understand that many Microsoft employees will be transferred into the JV). Moreover, what will become of other HC initiatives underway at Microsoft such as their announced work in the insurance exchange marketplace?

A straight up comparison of Google’s complete retreat from health care to this move by Microsoft is a bit unfair, but yet another juggernaut exiting from an industry desperately in need of new ideas is puzzling.

Is this JV the type of new idea needed by the healthcare sector?  Nat McLemore, GM for Microsoft Health Solutions Group describes the GE / Microsoft JV as follows:

“… Microsoft and GE Healthcare have just announced an exciting new initiative aimed at improving healthcare quality and the patient experience. The two companies are creating a joint venture that will combine Microsoft’s deep expertise in building platforms and ecosystems with GE Healthcare’s experience in clinical and administrative workflow solutions. The new venture, which is pending regulatory approval and has yet to be named, will develop and market an open, interoperable technology platform and next-generation clinical applications that will help enable better population health management.

The joint venture’s foundational offering of an open technological platform will also enable application developers to build customized, differentiated solutions that interact to meet customers’ specific needs. By enabling independent software vendors, system integrators and healthcare IT pros to develop on a common platform, the joint venture aims to support a robust ecosystem of partners that offers customers real choice.”

For veteran watchers of technology centric alliances, it is easy to be skeptical.

The platform approach is exactly what Microsoft Amalga was about – a gigantic integration engine for healthcare. It is no surprise that Amalga will be a major foundational asset in the new company. The challenge with Amalga, and the reason why its adoption was limited in the US, is that giant footprint implementations are far from the ideal solution. Amalga required massive investments and a multi-year implementation to stand-up, and in a world where hospitals and other healthcare organizations don’t have the appetite or budget for monolithic systems and if they do…it likely orbits around an EMR.  The likes of Epic have taken up most of the bandwidth that hospitals can afford for big-iron IT projects and despite Microsoft attempt to buy market share, its ‘platform strategy’ had limited success.

If the JV platform vision is right (and what is needed for the industry) it will take a few years to get legs. Beyond integrating their HCIT suites (and apparently work has already been underway here for a few months) it will take considerable effort for the new company to ready its platform for app developers, a sometimes skeptical lot. Developers may opt to wait and see whether the JV successfully drives adoption for their platform vision given their traditionally limited resources and proclivity for aligning around the true vendor platforms where market share is known, versus jumping on board into the Microsoft/GE health care legacy.

Finally, is this big platform vision the right approach in today’s world of SaaS, Cloud, SOA, and modular app development? Healthcare already has many traditional stacks   – Epic, Cerner, McKesson, Allscrips…the list goes on. The new entrants like Aetna/Medicity, Optum/Axolotl, IBM, Oracle, and others are focused on integrating data and workflows. If the new company claims it is the ‘true path’ for data integration, the market could become confused with other mega HCIT vendor messages, given they acute need for nimble solutions that are quick to implement, solve an immediate pain point, and provide a near term ROI.

Big HCIT vendors must do more to help perpetuate a strong vision and direction for the healthcare industry and perhaps this is where this new venture can emerge as a leader. Microsoft and GE have both tried and neither was successful. Perhaps they have some new innovation and new capabilities that could create a truly differentiated solution. We’re watching closely and would like to know what you think.

Scott Donahue

Scott Donahue is a Vice President at TripleTree covering infrastructure and application technologies across numerous industries and specializes in assessing the “master brands” of IT and Healthcare. Follow Scott on Twitter or e-mail him at sdonahue@triple-tree.com

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Tech Platform Innovations in Healthcare Will Rely on “hCloud”

This week, TripleTree hosted its fourth Principals Forum web cast of 2010 discussing the impact cloud computing is making across the healthcare landscape.

Our colleague Ryan Stewart facilitated our panel-centric discussion around the broad healthcare industry issues of improving access to, and care within the healthcare system.  After a few introductory remarks by Scott Donahue of TripleTree on the evolution of Software as a Service (SaaS) to cloud, our panel of four accomplished healthcare veterans took the helm, they were:

• Dr. Giovanni Colella, President, CEO & Co-Founder – Castlight Health
• John Holton, President, CEO & Founder – SCI Solutions
• Nancy Brown, Chief Growth Officer – MedVentive, Inc.
• Albert Prast, CIO/CTO – Connextions

The panel cited real world examples where cloud-based solutions are influencing how hospitals, doctors, and the patients consume information, primarily:

The impact of hCloud on healthcare workflows:  Cloud computing is weaving itself into both the clinical and administrative areas of healthcare and fundamentally changing the dynamic of “IT support” for healthcare workflows and care delivery. Impacts of cloud computing in healthcare can be seen in:

• Anywhere, anytime access to accurate and usable information: hCloud is enabling the mobilization of data to the right constituent, through the right medium at the right time.  This is having a profound impact on how providers deliver care, patients access care, and consumers (i.e. patients) purchase healthcare coverage and connect with the care community.
• Improved access to and utilization of information: One of the biggest challenges in healthcare is the fact that critical data (necessary for clinicians to make accurate decisions, or consumers to make informed choices) is spread out across multiple systems and points of care.  Healthcare IT’s data structures are based on encounters and events rather than on a holistic patient viewpoint making it very difficult to identify and collect the data, let alone analyze the information. Traditional “silioized” approaches to managing data are being challenged by solutions that leverage the cloud to more efficiently gather, integrate, and act upon critical information.
• New levels of collaboration across the care continuum: Utilizing the Web as a platform provides a lower cost, more ubiquitous method of connecting provider communities as well as linking patients to providers appropriately.
• Empowering consumers: With better access to information, more transparency, and the ability to retrieve information across a multitude of digital and physical mediums, consumers are more involved in identifying the right channels of care and types of coverage for their individual needs.
• Cost efficiency: Cloud, the web, and SaaS have made developing the clinical and administrative systems to support healthcare more cost efficient. As these models become even more mainstream in healthcare, hospitals can focus less on building out massive IT infrastructure projects and more on supporting clinical workflows. Legacy systems can be gradually phased out and modern architectural standards will better support necessary integration across the enterprise.

Certainty there are complexities and information sensitivities within healthcare that are more acute than other industries, but as Dr. Collela eloquently stated that “Cloud computing is coming to healthcare… There is no way to stop it.”  With so many stakeholders standing to benefit from this computing paradigm, and with proven delivery points across industries and within healthcare, it is just a matter of time until the cloud moves away from these specialized discussions to become more accepted as mainstream within healthcare.

The evolution of hCloud is a core component to our research agenda for 2011, and will be influencing how our strategic advisory clients think through growth, financing and liquidity strategies in the months ahead. Click here to listen to the audio replay of the web cast; and here to read our most recent publication on hCloud.

We’d like to know what you think. Have a great week!

Scott Donahue

Scott Donahue is a Vice President at TripleTree covering infrastructure and application technologies across numerous industries and specializes in assessing the “master brands” of IT and Healthcare. Follow Scott on Twitter or e-mail him at sdonahue@triple-tree.com

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The Impact of Cloud Computing on Healthcare

Minneapolis, MN – On December 1^st, TripleTree will host a Principals Forum webcast on the convergence of cloud computing and healthcare.

As its final Principals Forum of 2010, TripleTree has scheduled four distinguished panelists to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing payers, providers, employers, and consumers and how cloud computing will play a major role in fixing our nation’s healthcare system.  Specifically where cloud computing will address issues surrounding cost containment, information transparency and data privacy and the opportunities for improved collaboration.   While other industries have recognized the cost and scalability advantages of cloud computing, its impacts on healthcare are now beginning to materialize.

Ryan Stewart and Scott Donahue of TripleTree will co-facilitate this panel discussion, which will feature the perspectives of:

• Dr. Giovanni Colella, President, CEO & Co-Founder – Castlight Health
• John Holton, President & CEO & Founder – SCI Solutions
• Nancy Brown, Chief Growth Officer – MedVentive, Inc.
• Albert Prast, CIO/CTO – Connextions

“From closing the chasm between cost, quality and outcomes-based reimbursement to optimizing patient-provider communications and access, to enabling a retail-based shift from a B2B to B2C environment, hCloud^® is emerging as a highly germane area of opportunity and debate and we look forward to a collaborative discussion with our most distinguished panel of industry thought leaders who will bring a broad spectrum of perspectives from across the industry,” commented TripleTree’s Ryan Stewart.

The dial-in number for this webinar is (312) 878-0218, access code 506-175-369.  For more information, contact TripleTree at (952) 253-5300 or visit us at http://www.triple-tree.com.

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Seven Considerations for the Impact of Open Source on Healthcare – 10/18/10

There has been much written by TripleTree and others on the influence of cloud technologies on healthcare, but what about open source as a transformative technology?

No doubt open source technologies will make their way into and have an impact on healthcare in some way, but we’re of the mindset that it will take a long time to get here, and the size of the impact could be minimal. Here are seven considerations for healthcare CIOs and their technology partners:

1. Commercial open source vendors are small and unsophisticated in the ways of healthcare IT. So with little investment and large barriers to entry (slow buying cycles, antiquated architectures, compliance, etc.), healthcare will be a hard sell. There will probably be some experiments, trial runs, and partnerships with early stage ISV’s looking to triangulate around the trend of SaaS/Cloud/Open Source; but in reality it will take a few years to get efforts ramped up into large commercially viable solutions.
2. Virtualization will have a bigger impact on HCIT operational efficiency than simply open source. Sure, where virtualization and open source intersect (specifically at the Xen hypervisor), there may be some impact, but I think open source gets overshadowed by virtualization investments.
3. The IT “master brands” vendors with expressed interest in healthcare (MSFT, IBM, HP, etc) are pushing their proprietary stacks.  Deeper pockets will prevail and the only new entrant that can make an impact is probably Google (and their HC commitment is questionable). Will they push ChromeOS into HC and make a meaningful impact?  Not likely as ChromeOS is too new and Google Health is too consumer (rather than system) focused. Plus with Oracle taking out Sun, another open source proponent will move to a proprietary stack (Fusion)
4. Workflow and process integration in HC systems are mostly manual. Before open source has a meaningful impact on data integration a process automation evolution within healthcare is needed…and process automation in healthcare is nascent.
5. Open source has had a good seven year run of enterprise acceptance. Given that healthcare is lagging about 10 years behind in IT innovation, we likely have two plus years before HC starts thinking about open source more widely. In smaller pockets, we could see early open source efforts where a few innovative vendors expose limited/departmental use cases or in public sector instances where states try to be innovative with alternative procurement (e.g.  HIE may see open source experimentation).
6. The mainstreaming of SaaS and other alternate delivery/licensing/outsourcing models from groups like Athena provide a better value proposition.  This is relevant to the likely adopters – small and mid-size doctor’s offices – who want to avoid on-premise open source systems and related complexities of specialized IT knowledge and a willingness to go-it-alone with limited vendor support.  SaaS wasn’t mainstream when enterprises began to embrace open source; but now that SaaS (and cloud) is prevalent the same drivers of open source adoption don’t exist.
7. Open source will probably have more of an impact in research/government/university settings where a healthcare focus and established open source culture (around longer running projects) can coexist.  Within healthcare, open source will emerge more readily with health plans where large data centers and processing make it an interesting operating system.

The list of technology issues confronting healthcare is considerable, and it’s unclear that open source would have impact given other innovative tools.  We’re watching the likes of Citrix and RedHat as vendors that could step forward and we’ll continue to update this blog with our latest thinking.

Thanks and have a great week!

Scott Donahue

Scott Donahue is a Vice President at TripleTree covering infrastructure and application technologies across numerous industries and specializes in assessing the “master brands” of IT and Healthcare. Follow Scott on Twitter or e-mail him at sdonahue@triple-tree.com

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Can Cloud Computing Help Fix Healthcare? – 08/23/10

(The following is an excerpt from an article our colleague Scott Donahue authored for CloudBook magazine on hCloud – read the full article here)

Few topics have dominated the political news cycle over the past year more than health care reform. The recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are aimed at improving the quality, cost, and accessibility of health care in the United States – an indisputably massive but much-needed undertaking.

Aside from political debates in Washington, the technology industry continues to buzz about cloud computing. It may seem, at first glance, that health care reform and cloud computing are unrelated, but TripleTree’s research and investment banking advisory work across the health care landscape are proving otherwise; the linkage with cloud is actually quite significant.

Our viewpoint is that cloud computing may end up mending a health care system that has largely let a decade of IT innovation pass by and now finds itself trapped in inefficiency and stifled by legacy IT systems.

Much has already been written about cloud computing’s potential and demonstrated successes at helping enterprise IT infrastructures adapt and transform into more efficient and flexible environments. But where does cloud computing fit within health care?

We have long espoused that innovation in health care needs to come from outside of the industry. Today, the likes of Amazon, Dell, Google, IBM, Intuit, and Microsoft have built early visions for cloud computing and see a role for themselves as health care solution providers. We are convinced that traditional HIT vendors will benefit from aligning with these groups such that their domain-specific knowledge can attach itself to approaches for cloud (public, private and hybrid), creating a transformational shift in the health care industry.

Cloud is active, relevant and fluid…see our colleague Jeff Kaplan’s recent blog post on the changing competitive landscape.

We’d be interested to know what you think…have a great week!

Chris Hoffmann

Chris Hoffmann is Research Director at TripleTree covering Cloud, SaaS and enterprise applications and specializes in CRM, loyalty and collaboration solutions across numerous industries. Follow Chris on Twitter or e-mail him at choffmann@triple-tree.com.

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Assessing the Leadership Needs at HP – 08/13/10

Late last week, we began to collaborate with our friend and colleague Jeff Kaplan at THINKstrategies on the ramifications of the change in leadership underway at HP.  While Mark Hurd orchestrated a masterful cost-cutting era, we collectively agreed that fresh thinking will be needed for them to successfully advance HP’s brand in the emerging era of cloud-centric outsourcing?

It’s a tough call…HP is huge, and one would be led to believe that a “big company” executive would bring the right skill set to the role.  One the other hand, would HP benefit from fresh thinking and an entrepreneurial leader from the outside be better suited to challenge staid thinking and usher in a a new vision? Take a look the piece we co-published with Jeff and let us know what you think!

Have a great week!

Chris Hoffmann

Chris Hoffmann is Research Director at TripleTree covering Cloud, SaaS and enterprise applications and specializes in CRM, loyalty and collaboration solutions across numerous industries. Follow Chris on Twitter or e-mail him at choffmann@triple-tree.com.

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Technology Critical For Emerging Accountable Care Organizations – 07/28/10

Healthcare organizations have a growing list of concerns – financial, operational and strategic.  Coupled with today’s economic uncertainty, initiatives aimed at addressing these concerns need to be agile enough to side step considerable technical landmines.

New healthcare models like Accountable Care Organizations are addressing important issues like patient care, cost management and improved communication quality via information systems founded on a collaboration platform.

When technology is involved in any such solutions (and here they’re at the core), transparency and predictability for the long-term benefits can be elusive.  Reasons for this vary, but often they point to unknown financial requirements and related returns on actual investment.

We’re predicting that cloud centric solutions – where the ownership costs are essentially a monthly fee (based on usage / consumption) offer a simplistic ROI.  Here are ten areas where cloud centric healthcare “hCloud” will likely emerge (there are many more but a list of ten seemed like a good place to start).

1. Communication portals
2. Coordinated care and accountability
3. Team based interactions – centered on the patient
4. Incentive based compensation – aligning health plans and providers
5. Compliance controls – embedded for patient-focused resources, practices, hand-offs and experiences
6. Workflows and systems to handle bundled payments
7. Primary care providers and how they collaborate with specialists
8. E-prescribing
9. Chronic Care Management
10. Ongoing patient follow up, wellness and related education

Like we said…there are clearly many more solution areas, but let us know what you think –

Have a great week!

Chris Hoffmann

Chris Hoffmann

Chris Hoffmann is Research Director at TripleTree covering Cloud, SaaS and enterprise applications and specializes in CRM, loyalty and collaboration solutions across numerous industries. Follow Chris on Twitter or e-mail him at choffmann@triple-tree.com.

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Cloud-Enabled Outsourcing: Economically Sensible – 07/05/10

Trends in the many industry sectors are pointing toward another eventful year as the maturation of Outsourcing and Cloud-centric technologies impacts how organizations share, find and archive important content.

Back in early 2008, TripleTree published a report on SaaS Platforms report detailing some approaches being used by Software as a Service (SaaS) firms to broaden their application partner ecosystems, harness the power of developers and become more relevant.

By all accounts, these vendors have been busy and successful.  SaaS seems to have found a new, catchier term “Cloud” to replace the “as-a-service” label attached to nearly everything resembling an on demand solution, including new ways for outsourcing and managed services vendors to innovate.

In sectors like education, healthcare and logistics we’re predicting that outsourcing and managed services firms are entering a new era, one where clients will still look to them as a partner for cutting costs and driving efficiency.  But we also think this era will see outsourcers and service providers leveraging Cloud-centric solutions to address the growing need of organizations to homogenize their business applications and link disparate data sets.

Our team is actively advising outsourcing firms on strategic alternatives, visit our blog next week for more of our latest thoughts – until then, if you’re interested in learning more we’d like to hear from you.  Here are a few news items that caught our eye this week:

• States confront pending healthcare reform
• eHealth standards are confusing some doc’s
• Hospital Twitter stats
• Cisco beefs up Cloud hiring

Have a great week!

Chris Hoffmann

Chris Hoffmann

Chris Hoffmann is Research Director at TripleTree covering Cloud, SaaS and enterprise applications and specializes in CRM, loyalty and collaboration solutions across numerous industries. Follow Chris on Twitter or e-mail him at choffmann@triple-tree.com.

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Uncommon Clarity – 06/07/10

Many industry pundits are predicting continued strength in the consolidation in the technology industry.  The master brands – those vendors offering full stack solutions – have led the charge to date, impacting middle market and emerging competitors in how they’re thinking about financing growth, optimizing sales channels and forging relevant alliances.  Much of this consolidation is reactionary as product and partnership announcements and new innovations come on line.   TripleTree maintains a two column scorecard of 15 tech and 15 healthcare master brands, and below we’ve summarized a random walk of occurrences from three vendors from the tech side of this ledger.

• SAP: Does new leadership bring new momentum? Consider the major acquisition of Sybase shortly after a change in leadership.  While still behind Oracle’s “full stack” capabilities, SAP made a huge leap across the stack in applications (especially capabilities to mobilize) and data management.

• Google: The only threat to Apple (iPhone and iPad) dominance is next-gen smart phones.  Sprint and TMobile are actively messaging around Andoid and buzzing about “iPhone killers”, but Google has miles to go in refining it platform to approach the elegance and simplicity of Apple.

• Microsoft: CEO Steve Ballmer says Microsoft is “all in” with cloud, but still the majority and revenues comes from OS and desktop applications. The channel / cannibalization concerns that confronted them with SaaS five years ago persist, and it’s hard to believe they have conjured up a new strategy to allay them with cloud.  Besides, it’s in Microsoft’s interest to be all-Microsoft-all-the-time, so its unlikely they will ever offer a truly interoperable, open cloud.

Let us know what you think – in the meantime, here are a few things we’re keeping an eye on:

• Provider shortages and access concerns mount for healthcare reform – more here
• Does acquiring Palm direct HP into the tablet market?  – more here
• Home health hub via Google TV? – more here
• Jeff Kaplan on HP’s restructuring – more here

Read our most recent research on Healthcare Compliance and mHealth, and if your schedule aligns, catch up with us this week at AHIP in Las Vegas.

To learn more, contact us at 952-253-5300…have a great week!

Chris Hoffmann

Chris Hoffmann is Research Director at TripleTree covering Cloud, SaaS and enterprise applications and specializes in CRM, loyalty and collaboration solutions across numerous industries. Follow Chris on Twitter or e-mail him at choffmann@triple-tree.com.

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