Putting Patients First: How Health Organizations are Approaching a Hybrid Future

Video played a major role in enabling healthcare organizations to communicate and care for patients over the past 18 months. It allowed providers to reach their patients during a period of isolation, helped teams collaborate on medical innovations to address the pandemic, and enabled connections between family members, specialists, and world experts like never before.

At Zoomtopia 2021, our healthcare leaders and customers at the forefront of care delivery, drug development, and medical device innovation discussed lessons from the pandemic and offered their perspectives on the future of the industry. See what they had to say, and catch all the sessions from our healthcare track in our Zoomtopia on-demand library.

Our healthcare industry keynote brought together Zoom’s healthcare CIO advisor Bill Shickolovich and head of healthcare Heidi West to discuss the future of healthcare along with Ash Damle, founder and CEO of Healiom.

As Shickolovic noted, patients want to have the option for remote care, but some elements of care will still require physical presence, necessitating a hybrid work model. As health organizations figure out how to implement virtual and in-person care when appropriate, “the devil will be in the details on how patient needs, provider needs, and economics line up,” Shickolovic said.

West discussed where Zoom fits into virtual care and where it goes beyond care, breaking down communication silos to engage patients and families, bring medical device experts virtually into places like the surgical suite, and enable multidisciplinary teams to come together.

We also saw some amazing emerging uses of technology to make healthcare more convenient, personalized, and affordable. Damle showed how Healiom is helping streamline logistics of telehealth through features like deviceless screening, using video, audio, and other technologies to measure pulse, respiration, and emotional state.

Watch the Zoomtopia healthcare keynote.

We’ve been listening to our healthcare customers’ feedback and using it to constantly improve and innovate on our platform. We devoted an entire session to learning about new and upcoming Zoom features relevant to our industry. 

Tyler Fiore, senior solutions engineer for healthcare, shared how we’re enhancing the experience for patients with the ability to test settings prior to their appointment and join meetings from their mobile browser. He also highlighted new features like Waiting Room video content and improvements to our Epic integration, which are currently available; and upcoming integrations with Cerner and Redox.

Watch “What's New? Understanding the Impact of Zoom's Latest Healthcare Product Features” 

Data shows that video-assisted virtual visits will continue in the long run: a May 2021 Qualtrics survey commissioned by Zoom shows that 61% of people surveyed in the U.S. who had used telehealth in the past six months wanted to access healthcare in person and virtually moving forward. A July 2021 McKinsey study showed that telehealth utilization has stabilized at a rate 38 times higher than before the pandemic — between 13% and 17% across all specialties. 

We heard from our customers and partners about their journey implementing video-assisted virtual visits during the pandemic, and their best practices for improving the experience. 

Carly Neal, system manager of virtual health at CommonSpirit Health, shared how one of the largest health systems in the U.S. used Zoom’s Epic integration to fit seamlessly into clinician workflows, and gave the audience some tips for enabling secure, easily accessible visits. “It’s not just an IT initiative,” she said. “You can’t just send people a Zoom login and expect to transform care — it’s a true collaborative effort.” 

She was joined by Zoom healthcare account executive David Hurt, who offered some easy, out-of-the-box workflow solutions for small- and mid-sized practices implementing Zoom. 

Watch “Become a Video-Assisted Virtual Visit Expert With Zoom”

A common question we hear from healthcare providers is, “Can Zoom integrate with medical devices?” The answer is yes! Eric Bacon, president of AMD Global Telemedicine, and Scott Simmons, healthcare specialist at Poly, discussed how different devices like stethoscopes, ENT scopes, dermascopes, and general imaging cameras, can connect with Zoom to help facilitate remote examinations. They suggested healthcare decision-makers consider factors like ease of use, regulatory requirements, clinical workflow needs, and intended use when purchasing medical devices for integration.

Watch “Make Video-Assisted Virtual Visits Anything But Ordinary With Accessories” 

Dr. Penny Trayner, clinical neuropsychologist, and Merryn Dowson, assistant psychologist, brought our learnings full-circle with a real-world application of using Zoom to deliver care remotely to patients with acquired brain injuries. With Zoom, Dr. Trayner and Dowson said they were able to provide more flexible care that fit patients’ schedules better and allowed them to feel more comfortable joining from their homes. 

One of their most unique use cases involved providing patients with remote access to play a therapeutically designed computer game over Zoom. “When telehealth is successful, there’s a continuity of service delivery and vital windows for treatment are not missed. Patients don’t just survive, they thrive,” Dr. Trayner said.

Watch “How Zoom Changed Patients' Lives: Case Examples From a Clinical Neuropsychologist” 

Finally, we got a fascinating look at how two organizations are using Zoom across the drug discovery pipeline. 

Michael Casarez, associate director of messaging and collaboration at BioMarin Pharmaceutical, discussed how his life sciences organization collaborates with internal and external stakeholders to develop drugs for rare diseases. BioMarin’s 5,000 employees — spread across six continents — use Zoom to communicate with doctors and researchers to identify patients with rare diseases; engage with patients and families; liaise with local drug regulatory agencies; and train medical staff to administer treatments. As the industry evolves, Casarez sees use cases like virtual reality inspections becoming more common to streamline the process of getting regulatory approval for manufacturing sites.

Bryce Davis, director of commercial strategy for Veeva Engage at Veeva Systems, detailed how drug reps saw an improvement in the quality of their interactions with doctors once face-to-face drop-ins were replaced with virtual meetings during the pandemic. He believes the pharmaceutical industry will need to follow the lead of healthcare and focus on communicating with stakeholders along the continuum of care. “I can imagine a world where we have nurses, a general practitioner, specialist, surgeon, all on a Zoom call together, where we’re educating that continuum of care, rather than individual doctors,” Davis said.

Watch “Accelerating Scientific Innovation Through Operational Efficiency: Zoom for Biotech and Pharma” 

Check out these Zoomtopia 2021 sessions in our on-demand library, and subscribe to our blog to stay up to date on all the latest Zoom healthcare news.