Digital Transformation in Healthcare: 2024 Guide to Solutions, Challenges, and Examples to Learn From

In healthcare, digital transformation is key to overcoming challenges such as growing patient expectations, staff burnout, and unaffordability of care.  

However, implementing a digital transformation strategy is difficult due to increasing financial pressure on healthcare organizations. This is why it’s a good idea to consider outsourcing non-core activities, including healthcare software development. 

According to Deloitte’s 2024 Global Health Care Sector Outlook, 40% of healthcare leaders are considering optimizing their service models through outsourcing and offshoring.

But could outsourcing the tech side of your project help you successfully transform your healthcare service delivery? Let’s find out. Below, we analyze the tech aspects of digital transformation in healthcare to help you make an informed decision.

Digital transformation in the healthcare industry refers to integrating advanced digital technologies and using digital channels within a healthcare organization’s workflow to improve performance and reach of provided healthcare services. 

Digital transformation aims at:

and more. 

Some of the many digital products that healthcare organizations adopt in the course of digital transformation include:

It’s worth noting that healthcare digital transformation initiatives are complex; they involve tradeoffs due to barriers created by laws and regulations, technological novelty, and budget limitations. 

Successful digital transformation requires a well-weighed yet flexible implementation strategy that enables organizations to monitor and evaluate emerging opportunities and meet existing limits.

By implementing cutting-edge technologies (AI, cloud, remote monitoring, and others), healthcare organizations can expect a positive impact on many aspects of their business:

Digital transformation in the healthcare industry is difficult due to various factors that can decrease the benefits of implementation, stretch the implementation time frame, and increase total costs. 

Here are the top barriers and challenges organizations should keep in mind:

Some organizations have established digital flows that personnel have been using for decades, and these may need to be optimized or fully replaced to accelerate processes.

However, legacy systems often respond slowly to changes, and old digital flows can be hard or even impossible to modify. Healthcare organizations can experience difficulties in optimizing processes and may respond to changes slower than expected.

Insufficient digital skills among personnel and a lack of motivation to acquire them can be huge barriers to implementing a new solution. Another problem can be overload, leading to a situation in which staff have no time for learning.

As a result, management needs to introduce organizational changes to ensure technical improvements will generate the expected value.

When an organization implements a new system, it faces a transition period during which both old and new digital flows exist simultaneously. This can create difficulties for personnel who need to keep both flows in mind.

Also, intricate data synchronization is required to ensure no data is lost. 

With this in mind, it’s crucial to work with a development team that has expertise in minimizing the transitional period and knows how to introduce automated data exchange and synchronization where possible.

Project costs can be high during initial stages because the engineering team must simultaneously develop a new system and support the old one. 

When the transitional period is over and the old system is no longer needed, revenue will grow because of increased capacity and reduced maintenance costs.

The success of a digital transformation initiative relies heavily on cutting-edge technologies that cover changing patient and organizational needs.

Here are the key technology trends shaping the digital transformation of the healthcare industry:

Today, consumer adoption of virtual health services remains higher than during pre-pandemic times. 

Telemedicine and direct communication with healthcare professionals via secure messengers allow patients to schedule and attend checkups and follow-up visits without traveling to a medical facility. 

Also, telemedicine solutions prevent staff burnout by enabling virtual monitoring and eliminating unmonetized calls.

Centralizing patient information is crucial for improving productivity. A healthcare system that collects and stores patient-related data in one place, preferably in a private cloud, enables immediate access to information. 

Standardizing data exchange and using healthcare interoperability platforms lets a healthcare organization aggregate data from different sources automatically. 

As a result, organizations avoid duplication or using outdated patient data and free personnel from repetitive manual data entry.

Healthcare mobile app development is crucial for patient-centered services. Mobile apps enable organizations to implement functionality that encourages patients to take control of their health and actively participate in treatment. 

Apps can increase patient engagement by:

One of the crucial healthcare digital transformation trends is AI, which has many use cases across healthcare. Artificial intelligence tools can process patient data to:

AI can help improve treatment plans and practices based on big data collected from many patients. It can also be used as a tool for population-level studies, helping to detect emerging trends and draw insights on how to address them.

Moreover, AI can decrease professionals’ workloads by generating notes, summaries, instructions, and general checklists.

Sensitive patient data is a valuable target for cybercriminals, and hackers can attack organizations of any size when they see their chances of success are high. 

Hacking activities are expensive for healthcare providers: the average cost of a healthcare data breach was $10.93M in 2023. 

Unsurprisingly, enhanced software source code, infrastructure, and patient data security remain vital trends. So does teaching personnel and patients the basics of keeping their devices and apps safe.

Regulations can present challenges for using emerging technologies on a digital transformation project. Any advanced new technology must be tested for legal and regulatory compliance before the team starts using it on a project.

Also, when an organization is present across several regions, it must be prepared to adapt digital products to each market. A flexible software architecture is necessary to adapt efficiently to existing and future regulatory challenges.

Seeing the immediate positive results of changes and focusing on long-term benefits are crucial for the success of a digital transformation initiative in healthcare. 

The following steps help address implementation challenges, ensuring that integrating technologies into existing workflows brings benefits both now and in the long term:

The first step is auditing the existing system and processes, which lets the project team identify areas for improvement, risks, and possible inconsistencies in the user experience.

At this step, the project team:

It also considers what source code or ideas can be reused from the client’s existing project.

At the same time, the project team analyzes requirements provided by system stakeholders. They also study available project documentation and collect missing requirements when necessary.

The team clarifies:

The project team decides on a solution for the client’s requirements, which can be integrating an available third-party system or developing custom software. The choice is based on outcomes of the system audit and requirements analysis. 

The team can:

An iterative approach works best for healthcare digital transformations, ensuring the team constantly delivers new features and system improvements. In general, iterations include the following activities:

The project team must maintain and support the system to ensure it remains fast, responsive, and secure. 

Regular updates are inevitable to keep up with changing compliance requirements.

To reduce implementation costs and improve the pace of digital transformation, organizations can integrate third-party services such as:

There are many EHR/EMR solutions on the market catering to the needs of general practices and specialized clinics.

EHR and EMR functionality can include: 

Examples of EHR and EMR systems:

Healthcare providers integrate telehealth solutions to improve patient reach and increase accessibility for patients living in remote areas.

Key functionalities include:

Examples of telemedicine and messaging solutions:

Healthcare payment processors tailor billing and revenue management to the needs of medical institutions.

In-demand features of payment services include:

Examples of healthcare payment processors:

Patient engagement solutions streamline communication between medical facilities, patients, and patients’ families, improving staff efficiency and increasing user satisfaction.

Common functionality includes:

Examples of patient engagement solutions:

Electronic prescription tools improve data exchange between clinics and pharmacies while monitoring drug prescriptions.

Digital pharmacy services offer such features as:

Examples of ePrescribing solutions:

Healthcare interoperability platforms simplify integrations and improve connectivity as well as data exchange.

Important features include:

Examples of healthcare interoperability platforms: 

AI in healthcare lets organizations automate different operations (such as data entry and analysis), draw actionable insights, and improve software security.

Key features of AI tools include:

Examples of AI tools for healthcare: 

Digital transformation is in high demand. According to a Market.us report, the global smart hospital market is forecasted to grow from $60.4B in 2023 to $361.7B in 2033 while bringing the latest technologies to clinics. 

Digital healthcare solutions provide many opportunities to improve care-related activities including examining, treating, and monitoring patients as well as searching through patients’ medical histories. 

Here are some examples of digital transformation to show what you could add to your workflow:

visualDx helps increase diagnostic accuracy. The app automatically takes available patient information to build a diagnosis. Doctors can look up symptoms, diagnoses, images, and more in a patient’s medical history and access prescribing information. 

visualDx provides AI tools and a large library of images to help with medical decisions. A bookmark feature lets doctors pin diagnoses and easily return to them later, decreasing search time.

Medisafe is a medication management app that helps patients take their medicine on schedule. The virtual pillbox provides personalized reminders, dosage instructions, and refill alerts. 

Users can send medication reports to healthcare organizations, track appointments, and receive drug interaction warnings. Integrations with health monitoring devices are also available.

The comprehensive Epic platform enables medical organizations to access, manage, and store patients’ digital health records, improving processes and decision support. 

The platform also provides functionality for patient engagement, data interoperability, revenue cycle management, analytics and insights, and managed care.

However, Epic is a standalone ecosystem, and it may lack integrations with external solutions.

Allianz MyHealth is a free app that allows Allianz clients to view and manage their insurance plans, find medical providers, and access insurance documents on the go. Users can also submit, manage, and track claims. 

The app provides valuable information app users might need, such as disease symptoms, translations of medical terms, local emergency numbers, and more. Teleconsultations are also possible via MyHealth.

Headspace is a mental health app offering assistance in managing thoughts and feelings, lowering stress and anxiety, and improving sleep. It helps users clarify their minds, remain calm, and increase productivity. 

Headspace for work has been designed to help companies create collaborative and supportive work cultures while ensuring the wellness of each team member.

Movendos is a health and wellness management platform that provides its functionality via several modules:

Organizations can use one or several modules depending on their needs.

Cerner HealtheDataLab is a cloud ecosystem with tools for research centers and scientific companies that work specifically with healthcare data. 

It helps overcome traditional bottlenecks in data science workflows, boosting dataset development and analysis along with deployment of insights to operational environments. 

Cerner HealtheDataLab uses Amazon Web Services and integrates several open-source tools, ensuring maximum scalability and simplified dataset development and administration.

We can help you build user-friendly, secure, and scalable solutions by adding missing tech expertise to your project and keeping the focus on patient-centered digital transformation in healthcare. 

To help our clients reach their goals, we take over software projects at any stage:

At IT Craft, you can hire a dedicated team who works as your external IT department. Or you can hire one or several experts to add missing skills or meet an aggressive deadline.

Here are two examples of digital transformation in healthcare when IT Craft developers helped clients meet their project goals:

Flexwise is an AI-based staff management platform that lets healthcare organizations predict workloads and address issues with understaffing or overstaffing quickly and efficiently.

The client initially had source code that they needed to optimize and finalize. They also required a team that could scale and expand the project.

IT Craft developers took over the project quickly, dividing a monolithic solution into microservices and launching it within the agreed timeline.

The team focused on software maintenance and integrating new features to help the client meet growing user expectations.

MEDITyme is a special HIPPA- and GDPR-compliant part of the XPERTyme platform that physicians can use to provide teleconsultations. It is also available for internal use within healthcare organizations as a white-label solution.

Cooperation started when the client approached IT Craft developers with a prototype of a videoconferencing platform that they needed to launch quickly.

The IT Craft team met an aggressive deadline, enabling the client to present the software at digital events and acquire customers. IT Craft developers focused on maintenance and expansion, launching a special platform to meet the needs of healthcare organizations.

Leading digital transformation in healthcare is a complex task. An organization must be ready to efficiently manage changing compliance requirements, user needs, and workflows.

There are two ways to maximize the benefits of digital transformation in healthcare:

Both can help an organization build a secure system while lowering costs through process optimization.