What is digital health consulting?

In recent years the healthcare industry has become more digitized than ever before. Where once healthcare providers refused to listen to symptoms of patients on the phone without them first coming in for an in-person evaluation, now a big chunk of doctor-patient communication is done virtually through digital technologies such as wearable devices, virtual health assistants, wellness management applications, and patient portals.

Digital health consulting is a specialized field in the healthcare industry that deals with the implementation of big data analytics and digital solutions to improve patient outcomes. The focus is on working together with healthcare companies to have a smoother transition into becoming digital health organizations.

Digital health consultants usually work as a team with the designated business client to develop different technologies such as electronic health records (EHR), mobile health apps, or virtual assistants. Consultants also come up with a development strategy through which an organization can use big data analytics or artificial intelligence to enhance clinical decision-making and patient engagement.

What are the consulting services
a digital health company may need?

The E-health world is huge when it comes to tools and services it can incorporate to support innovation and enhance health systems. The wide variety of options when considering an investment includes process imaging, medical devices, deep learning, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality.

With all of these high-tech solutions comes the need for regulation and approval. The job of a consultant is to provide insights on how to acquire governmental approval, from the FDA for example so that their customer can legally market their product.

The different types of consulting services:

Good manufacturing
practices
Risk assessment
Quality management
Regulatory strategy
Verification & validation
Resources management
Market analysis
Clinical evaluation
Information security
Sales

There are many sides that a digital health company has to consider if it wants to become an industry leader. What makes a consultant an indispensable part of that vision is all the capabilities one can provide to improve a client’s path to their goal.

Benefits and challenges of
digital health consulting

The biggest challenge of hiring a digital health consultant is knowing what kind you need. As we have mentioned, many different types of consulting can be offered to next-generation digital health providers. There are a couple of questions you have to ask yourself when looking for a consultant.

The first question is if your consultant has the right experience to create the right digital health plans for your business. Has the consultant worked with other companies that are the same size as yours?

One of the more important ones is whether your consultant has the necessary knowledge of regulatory know-how and medical knowledge. All of these are extremely vital aspects to consider when hiring a consultant. The solution to this challenge is to have a human relationships department that can do the right screening for you.

The benefits

Increased efficiency
Improved patient care
Enhanced data analysis
Saving on costs
Better patient engagement

Increased efficiency

Digital health consultants can assist healthcare organizations to discover a way to streamline workflow and reduce the burden on staff, allowing them to focus on patient care. Virtual assistants can provide automation of the billing process and also help medical professionals manage their schedule, therefore limiting disruptions.

Improved patient care

Digital health technologies such as electronic health records and remote monitoring devices help providers develop more personalized treatment plans. They also improve access by patients to their own data and make communicating with doctors a lot easier. These sides of digital technologies are what improve patient outcomes in the long run.

Enhanced data analysis

Another benefit of digital health technologies is they gather a lot of medical information about patients. With the efficiently gathered information, healthcare providers can gain better knowledge on how to distribute care and make better clinical decisions.

Saving on costs

The way digital health consulting reduces costs is by making the process of patient care more efficient. With the implementation of digital technologies, in-person visits are reduced. Having remote monitoring devices also helps with limiting readmissions and emergency room visits. All of these improvements save on costs.

Better patient engagement

Patients don’t usually take an active role in their healthcare. One of the reasons for that is that they don’t have access to a lot of the information. What digital health technologies do in this case is provide an opportunity for patients to be more engaged with their own healthcare.

The way this engagement is accomplished is through efficient patient portals and easy-to-use mobile health applications.

With the rapid development and implementation of digital technologies in the healthcare industry, the process of using them to an organization’s benefit becomes more and more difficult. There are many sides to using technology the right way and with the proper regulations. In all aspects of taking advantage of these innovations lies the need for a digital health consultant.

Such a consultant can solve a lot of problems and clear a path for the vision of a healthcare organization. When choosing the right partner, a provider has to be sure their choice is a consulting company with years of experience in the field of digital health and a background of success in similar projects.