What’s Next in Healthcare? 4 Lessons From HIMSS21 Global Health Conference

Transformation is a common theme in healthcare, an industry that is constantly innovating in order to improve people’s health and lives. The pandemic sparked one of the most significant transformations in a generation, bringing telehealth into the mainstream and inspiring providers, administrators, and staff to adapt to new ways of collaborating and delivering care.

Transformation was a key theme at the HIMSS21 Global Health Conference, which convened thousands of health industry professionals virtually and on-site for a hybrid event experience. 

Here’s a look at what we learned:

Our founder and CEO, Eric S. Yuan, joined HIMSS’ CEO, Hal Wolf, for a fireside chat that encompassed Zoom’s role during the pandemic and the best formula for innovation. “Spend more time talking with your customers and understanding their pain points,” Yuan advised. “Try to be the first to have a good solution to address that pain point. If you can keep doing that, that’s innovation.”

When it comes to healthcare today, patients are seeing themselves as consumers — they want flexibility, choice, and convenience. To stay competitive, healthcare organizations must adopt new ways of communicating with patients and delivering care.  

This mindset led us to develop our new mobile browser client, which was announced at HIMSS21. We introduced this app-less experience based on feedback from our healthcare customers, who wanted patients to have a process to join telehealth appointments without downloading any software.

Healthcare organizations of all sizes must prioritize security and privacy, especially in a hybrid working environment. Providers, administrators, and healthcare staff are now accessing digital platforms remotely and on personal devices, creating a challenge for IT teams. Organizations need to create strong security strategies to enable the protection of patient data, while making it easy for providers and staff to incorporate technologies like video conferencing into their secured workflows.

Another common topic at HIMSS21 revolved around social determinants of health (SDOH) — the conditions in which people live, learn, work, and play, which affect overall health and wellness. 

Technology can help address certain SDOH, such as lack of access to healthcare or health education, by making it possible for patients to connect with doctors, social services professionals, dietitians, mental health providers, and others along the continuum of care. Video-assisted virtual visits can even give providers a fuller picture of a patient’s home life and factors that may affect their condition and treatment. 

However, limited internet and device access continue to be a challenge for many patients, so organizations need to continue working on bridging the “digital divide” in healthcare. As Yuan mentioned in his keynote with Wolf, “Patients may live in a rural area, and the doctor is in New York or San Francisco — if the connection is unreliable, what can you do? You have to focus on technology.”

We’re excited to continue the conversation and discuss these and more themes at Zoomtopia 2021, coming up on September 13 and 14. 

With a session track designed specifically for healthcare audiences, we will deep dive into emerging applications for video in healthcare (think beyond telehealth!), security and privacy, workflow integrations, and more. 

Visit zoomtopia.com to register and build your agenda!