Rapid Digital Health Transformation During COVID-19 Crisis and Beyond

Sonia Samagh, MD, MBA, National Clinical Lead for Digital Health, OptumCare, and John Kontor, MD, SVP Provider Technology Services, Optum Advisory Services.  While we are in a period of crisis response and uncertainty today, healthcare organizations must implement solutions that simultaneously drive rapid progress and ensure long-term benefit for all. The pivot to virtual care has changed the fabric of healthcare delivery. To set themselves up for success now and post-COVID-19, healthcare providers needed to take a holistic approach to telehealth and digital health that accounted for how clinicians and patients interact with the new platforms and technologies. Drs. Samagh and Kontor discuss how they worked with more than 10,000 providers over a two-month process, creating a multidisciplinary “team of teams” to implement a broad-based digital health program, bringing in diverse experience and expertise to drive decisions quickly, and expanding remote access to millions of patients. They also share how they used service design to help staff overcome a quick learning curve, accelerate implementation, and drive adoption, and how to build a digital health foundation that efficiently operationalizes health innovations and manages through ambiguity.