Stack strategically

Eighty-seven percent of healthcare executives agree that their organization’s business and technology strategies are becoming inseparable—even indistinguishable. However, few healthcare organizations approached it this way prior to the pandemic. Now they have to. Technology is reshaping industries and accordingly, healthcare leadership demands technology leadership. In today’s world with a rapid influx of new technologies, architecture matters more than ever.

There are more technology choices than ever and the selections that an organization makes can define its value proposition today and tomorrow. It’s a battle of technology stacks. From the distribution of cloud deployments, types of artificial intelligence (AI) models and wide range of edge devices, to the design, or even basic physics, of hardware and computation – each layer of the stack is expanding into new dimensions. There is ample room for ingenuity, but it will require dynamic, sustainable architectures that take advantage of the full spectrum of capabilities today.

The most dynamic, sustainable and competitive architectures will allow healthcare organizations to build unique solutions that evolve with the organization’s goals. As such, 73% of healthcare executives say that their technology architecture is becoming critical to the overall success of their organization.

Stacking strategically includes investing in core digital technologies – social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) – which are the foundation of the post-digital healthcare organization. Many healthcare organizations have yet to invest in a strong foundation on which to build a competitive technology stack. They are bogged down by technical debt that accumulates as legacy solutions that were perhaps leading edge at the time become outdated and hinder the enterprise from realizing its strategy.

Instead, healthcare organizations can build technical wealth by moving away from static, unadaptable legacy systems and developing a future-adaptive, reusable approach to technology. Building tech wealth requires redesigning the technical foundation with modular, flexible building blocks that allow the organization to accommodate change in real time—not just cloud lift and shift. Building applications using microservices is one way to use composable elements that can be swapped in or out independently, scaled or repurposed over time.

The right cloud partner can bring the capabilities and talent to enable this digital transformation, but they all bring different attributes. Healthcare organizations can look for a partner that understands the industry nuances, but it is also important to think horizontally about the stack to solve for more than cloud. Those that excel at specific capabilities, such as data and analytics, can support differentiation and help create a competitive edge.

Healthcare enterprises need to reimagine the future of their services, operations, and more through the lens of what technology can make possible. The right stack can bring this future to life. During the pandemic, NVIDIA demonstrated the value of a holistic approach. The company launched Clara Guardian, a virtual patient assistant voice application that let hospitals rapidly respond to an unprecedented situation. With Clara Guardian, they could remotely monitor patient’s vital signs, enforce the wearing of PPE, direct employees and visitors away from high-risk areas, have contactless interactions with patients via voice-powered AI and more. Technology powered every layer of the stack: smart sensors, pre-trained data models, and edge AI chips and GPUs to support voice-powered assistance and dynamic wayfinding. These technologies helped hospitals reorient to everchanging needs and situations and will continue allowing them to do so after the pandemic.¹

Having the right professional and technology strategies, backed by a valuable combination of technologies across the stack, can give healthcare organizations the agility they need to keep up, no matter how the world changes next.

Healthcare organizations that reimagine the possibilities of technology-powered products and services will soon find they are playing a more active role in the relationship between people and technology than they ever have before. The fusion of technology, business and human ingenuity can work wonders in healthcare, even enabling clothing to be a remote-sensoring device.

Technology capabilities create limitless possibilities for improving care for people. As healthcare organizations accelerate their innovation strategies, they need to learn from lessons of the past and be strategic about the technology choices they make today as they will define the future.