Apr 30, 2024 | AIDH news, Australian Health News, Digital Health, Member news

Lara Spence, founder of Digivate Health, champions hybrid teams merging digital expertise and clinical insight for optimal outcomes. In the digital era, configuring technology to match health service delivery models is paramount. The payoff? Enhanced productivity, efficiency, care quality, and risk mitigation.

The strategy places people at the centre of a connected and digitally enabled healthcare system. It seeks to achieve four key health system outcomes that will improve the wider Australian health system by creating a more connected, person-centred digital health system and by realising the benefits digital technology offers consumers and carers, health care providers, the wider community, governments, industry and providers.

To achieve this, a hybrid team blending tech know-how with healthcare operational insight is indispensable. Spence underscores the pivotal role of independent client-side tech advisors in bridging vendor-healthcare provider gaps. This collaborative approach not only ensures successful tech integration but also creates and fortifies internal client capabilities.

As Digivate Health expands nationally, they’re seeking new team members to support their mission of tailoring digital solutions for healthcare organisations.

Successful digital transformation in healthcare requires technical know-how, coupled with a deep understanding of service delivery.

New and emerging digital solutions are highly configurable and offer enormous potential benefits for health services – if the strategy, planning and configuration are done correctly.

Where many solutions used to be ‘plug and play’ with standardised workflows, contemporary solutions require significant amounts of configuration to support, enable and enhance the health service’s operating model. The benefits of this can be immense, improving productivity and efficiency, enhancing care and customer experience and reducing clinical and operational risks.

Configuring these solutions requires technical know-how and capability, as well as a deep understanding of health services, operating models, customer journeys, and funding models to realise their full potential. This means IT professionals working alongside people who understand the service’s operating model and how the transformation will impact the organisation from frontline workers to executives.

This is done best through a hybrid team approach, which brings together the health service’s team, external advisors who are across contemporary operating models and know ‘what good looks like’ and digital experts to guide effective and efficient implementation.

One recent digital health start-up is focussed on supporting health services with this type of hybrid teaming approach. Lara Spence, founder of Digivate Health, a new digital health advisory firm based in Adelaide, explained the challenges she frequently sees clients facing.

‘Too often we see health services working directly with vendors on a digital transformation, but without the right level of knowledge to guide the configuration and implementation of the solutions they buy.’

Spence says that in her experience, including previously as Lead Director of PwC’s health practice in Adelaide, many health services do not have the level of expertise in-house to guide the development of functional requirements with the right level of detail or design.

‘Vendors will make a range of assumptions in bidding to be a preferred supplier, ranging from hosting, integration, security and other vital decisions that will guide the configuration and implementation of the digital solution. Frequently, we see health service providers are simply not equipped to shape these assumptions in ways that best serve their needs, and this can be a costly gap in expertise.’

This is why the role of a client-side technical advisor or implementation partner is so valuable. Having a team who can work alongside the health service’s team from the earliest stages of the project provides the health service with a partner who understands their specific needs and objectives and who can work with vendors to translate these into the configuration and implementation of the digital solution.

‘We see this translator role as essential for digital transformation. Without it, health services often do not realise the benefits they are seeking, or they run into significant costs late in the project to address issues that could have been avoided with the right expertise being applied early in the project.’

Digivate Health’s approach is to work as a hybrid team with their staff working as a cohesive team with the client’s staff. Digivate Health’s staff includes people with digital expertise tailored to health services, people with broader health consulting experience and people with direct clinical experience.

‘We believe this mix of capabilities is crucial to support clients to properly plan, design and implement their digital transformation. Without health sector experience, it is almost impossible for technical people alone to configure and deliver effective digital health solutions.’

The hybrid teaming approach also brings additional benefits to the health service beyond successful implementation. By working in a team with highly experienced technical and health sector specialists, the health service staff get exposure to new ways of working and get a boost in their internal capability.

Spence said that her team also gets a lot out of working closely with their clients and Digivate Health is already looking to expand its footprint across the country to support more clients with their digital transformation. Digivate Health is also very committed to the relationships with technical vendors in the health ecosystem and is proactively working with them to codesign optimal outcomes for clients.

‘While we’re starting in SA, we will bring this type of expertise and approach nationally over the next 12 months. We have had an amazing response to this method of engaging and clients are quick to notice the difference in approach and outcomes. We’re growing rapidly and are always on the lookout for good people who can work in this engaging and high-value way, so I’d encourage people to watch out for opportunities with us in the near future.’