US healthcare leaders are struggling to address the triple aim of care: the cost of care, health outcomes, and the experience of care. By many measures, progress has stalled or is even in decline. According to HFS Research, the cost of care has increased up to three times the rate of inflation over the last decade (not accounting for the current high inflation). Life expectancy has regressed to levels last seen in 1996—dropping from 79 years in 2019 to 76.1 years now. Most consumers remain dissatisfied with healthcare.
Publicis Sapient’s SPEED (Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering, and Data & AI) philosophy, combined with its ecosystem approach to serving health consumers—including patients, customers, beneficiaries, and employees—is already delivering improvements in experience and health outcomes. By addressing the entire ecosystem, from government services (research and public health), pharma, health insurance, to clinical delivery, Publicis Sapient has significant potential to impact health consumers.
Publicis Sapient’s view of experience in healthcare is grounded in being predictive, integrated, personalized, and ubiquitous. Its journey map encapsulates three stages of progression:
The opportunity to progress these paradigms and translate them into improved outcomes requires a shift from the notion of experience (point-in-time transactions) to engagement (longitudinal relationships). Health consumers want to be known not just for a symptom, prescription, or diagnosis, but as whole individuals. Understanding the health consumer is key for all stakeholders to ensure the right support and service is rendered promptly and cost-effectively, both proactively and reactively.
Digital resources—communications, devices, data, AI, and more—are critical to driving effective engagement. The smart application of digital technologies to address critical challenges can positively affect all parts of the healthcare ecosystem.
Publicis Sapient has partnered with a major US health system with a global footprint to expand clinical care through digital means. They developed platforms that connect clinicians, caregivers, administrators, and patients to improve engagement and health outcomes. This connectivity spans the value chain, leveraging content curation and delivery to connect clinicians with patients through scheduling tools and care delivery.
Through another set of solutions at the intersection of human interaction and digital tools, Publicis Sapient helped improve medication adherence by 43 percentage points and increased rehab attendance by more than 60 percentage points for patients recovering from cardiac arrests. Their approach to delivering digital empathy directly impacts health outcomes—a critical value proposition for health systems and their consumers.
Another example of improved outcomes is Publicis Sapient’s partnership with a global medtech and technology player to transform colonoscopy procedures. Instead of a traditional colonoscopy requiring anesthesia in an outpatient setting, the alternative facilitated by Publicis Sapient uses an ingestible camera. The consumer swallows the ingestible under clinical supervision and goes about their day. The camera sends images to an app via a disposable patch worn by the consumer. The gastroenterologist can review the images using proprietary AI-driven analysis, reducing review time from 45 minutes to just four minutes. Diagnostics are equal to or better than the traditional method, and the experience is significantly improved.
Leveraging digital capabilities to address health outcomes through experience and engagement delivers real value to health consumers.
Health plans and provider systems continue to struggle to engage health consumers, and inconsistent point-of-care experiences often affect health outcomes. Health plans and providers must consider working with service providers who have demonstrated their ability to address both experiential and health outcomes. Service providers with cross-industry experience can bring valuable insights to help design effective ways to improve engagement and drive better health outcomes. Reimagining healthcare and leveraging digital as a force for good in driving business outcomes and improving people’s lives must be the way forward.
Rohan Kulkarni
Practice Leader – Healthcare and Life Sciences
Rohan leads the Healthcare practice at HFS, bringing vast experience across the healthcare ecosystem. His background includes serving as Head of Healthcare Strategy at multiple Fortune 500 companies, Product Management leader, and CIO at two health plans. He is passionate about the Triple Aim (improving health outcomes, reducing the cost of care, and enhancing the care experience) and believes that health and healthcare intersect with every industry and facet of our lives. His well-rounded experience and passion bring a practical approach to his analyst role at HFS.
Insight. Inspiration. Impact.
HFS is a unique analyst organization that combines deep visionary expertise with rapid demand-side analysis of the Global 2000. Its outlook for the future is admired across the global technology and business operations industries. HFS analysts are respected for their no-nonsense insights based on demand-side data and engagements with industry practitioners.
HFS Research introduced the world to terms such as “RPA” (Robotic Process Automation) in 2012 and, more recently, Digital OneOffice™ and OneEcosystem™. The HFS mission is to provide visionary insight into the major innovations impacting business operations, such as Automation and Process Intelligence, Blockchain, the Metaverse, and Web3. HFS has deep business practices across all key industries, IT and business services, sustainability, and engineering.