Chief digital officer details the future of healthcare.
Imagine a world where sensors in your pillow monitor your temperature and sleep, where visits to your doctor are as easy as a tap on your smartphone, where stress tests can be performed while you are on the treadmill at your gym, and where medication is delivered to your door within hours of prescription via a drone. Nick Reddy, chief digital officer and senior vice president of information services for Baylor Scott & White Health, calls this the “concept car,” a look into what he predicts as the future of digital healthcare.
Reddy presented his thoughts and vision of digital innovation to the Baylor Scott & White Dallas Foundation Board of Directors in February. All of us, he says, are part of the greatest migration in human history: the move from an analog world to digital world. For example, he shared that of the more than 7 billion human beings on the planet, 5 billion have smartphones, a device that did not exist a decade ago. “The world has gone digital in an unprecedented fashion. We are really a part of a historic generation, and it is very exciting,” Reddy said.
With that migration to a digital lifestyle comes expanding choices and evolving preferences. Reddy explained that research from just a few years ago showed that 80 percent of today’s consumers begin their healthcare journey digitally, and 75 percent of consumers would choose medical providers who offer digital capabilities over those who do not. Perhaps the most telling statistic, as Reddy shared with tongue in cheek, is that 46 percent of people in a recent survey would prefer a broken bone over a broken phone.
“At Baylor Scott & White Health, we’re committed and excited. We feel like we have the responsibility and the permission to engage our consumers in this digital journey. We are trying to understand our consumers and are working hard to eliminate friction and provide care at ease for them,” Reddy said.
On the quest to developing more digital capabilities, Reddy says that Baylor Scott & White is probably in the “second inning.” The “first inning” consisted of asking 10,000 customers what convenience means to them. They used that information to make an app that is the highest rated healthcare app in the iTunes App Store and on Google Play.
“Convenience will trump a brand, but a brand with convenience will be formidable,” Reddy explained. “We picked the top 18 things our customers said they wanted and we built it for them.”
The second phase, or “inning,” is the period Baylor Scott & White is in now, he says, which is to take the information known about each patient and use it to help that person achieve good outcomes, whether that’s getting routine screenings or scheduling follow-up appointments. “We as an organization need to know more about our customers and behave in a way that makes us proactive and personable,” Reddy said.
Nick Reddy Chief Digital Officer Nick Reddy is leading the digital revolution at Baylor Scott & White Health.
In the third “inning” is where he sees tools such as artificial intelligence, or AI, come to the forefront to help clinicians unlock the power of data to find precision medicine, a phenomenon Reddy predicts will be the biggest development in the next decade or two. “AI is the most powerful tool in human history. The next 20 to 30 years, you will see an information revolution,” Reddy said.
Predictive thinking like this is one reason why Jim Hinton, CEO of Baylor Scott & White, refers to him as “one of the people reshaping Baylor Scott & White Health.”
As Reddy continues to help Baylor Scott & White navigate the new digital era, he sees both opportunity and responsibility for one of the most respected brands in healthcare today. “This is an organization that’s leading, like our mission calls us to,” Reddy said. “This is our responsibility, our burden and our privilege to push the envelope here. We are the trusted source—that’s what differentiates us. We’re doing all this for the good.”
If being a part of digital innovation speaks to you, contact Susan McSherry at Susan.McSherry@BSWHealth.org or 214.820.3417 for information on how to support the Making Healthcare Better Fund.
