In 2020, we launched the So You Want to Transform Healthcare podcast to capture the voices of those operating at the bustling intersection of healthcare and technology and the voices of those who are transforming healthcare in novel ways—both shaping the future of our industry. We just wrapped up our second year of episodes. As host of the podcast, I reflected on our 2022 conversations about the fast-evolving healthcare landscape and the fascinating insights gleaned from diverse perspectives.

Eleven inspiring guests shared experience and expertise, illuminating compelling facets of dramatic change across healthcare. Healthcare transformation is largely driven by creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and patient-centered focus.  Experts endeavor to leverage new ideas and technological advancement in the service of better medicine and healthcare delivery. This year, we learned a great deal about how that movement is driven by community engagement, healthcare data interoperability, organized medicine, the promise of omnichannel healthcare, digital biomarkers, improved surgical safety and outcomes, diversity of thought amongst leadership, care innovation, and behavioral health ingenuity.

Key takeaways from 2022 “So You Want to Transform Healthcare” guests:

1. Entrepreneurs addressing major healthcare challenges forge success with persistence and resilience. Through unwavering attention to community engagement and involvement, startups can help advance health equity.
2. Health data fuels transformation. While healthcare data flow and access continue to be challenging, solutions that reduce friction and improve interoperability are coming to fruition.
3. The power of national medical societies and organizations to shape healthcare lies in their ability to channel expertise to affect significant change.
4. Integrating the different methods of interaction available to patients (online, mobile, physical) is the goal of “omnichannel healthcare.” Patient-centered omnichannel healthcare will empower patients with more control over their health data and health care decisions, and enhance the patient experience.
5. Acquiring digital biometric data from the patient while they are in their home environment will be key to care advancement — for example, accurately measuring someone’s blood pressure twice/day for 14 days will provide insights into the true nature of the person’s blood pressure control. In the next few years, we may be able to continuously monitor blood pressure with clinical rigor, and we must face the challenge of how to best manage that large influx of information.
6. Technologies that enable unobtrusive and continuous assessments of the activities of daily living and quality of life will play an important role in functional outcomes for the future of patient-centered care.
7. Emerging technologies that provide real-time visual insights to surgeons can cultivate an advanced surgical intelligence network that improves patient outcomes, enhances safety, and expands accessibility.
8. Health systems cannot achieve excellence without diversity of thought amongst executive leaders.
9. Hospital-at-home programs are proliferating, but they require engagement and collaboration across all components of the health system for success — those components must align in new ways while truly putting patients at the center of care decisions.
10. Innovative behavioral health programs for children are wise to start with the voice, choice, and unique strengths of the child and family — and wrap them in a connected community of caregivers and evidence-based services and treatments.
11. When it comes to increasing health equity, advancing care, and extending access of new technologies and innovations to vulnerable populations, new tech start-ups can do good and be profitable. The two are not mutually exclusive, provided there is community engagement.

Thank you to all our amazing guests, and to all those who listen to our episodes. We look forward to a new year sharing more inspiring conversations with healthcare entrepreneurs and industry leaders as they work to transform the industry and improve medical care.