From me to we

The pandemic revealed enterprise fragility as organisations were cut off from partners and were scrambling for answers. Despite widespread investments in digital transformation technologies, few changed the way they partner. While partnerships are not new, we are now seeing adoption of multiparty systems that use a shared data platform to enable a resilient, adaptable and trustworthy foundation for existing and future partnerships. These shared platforms can help in the fight against future disruption.

From contact tracing to frictionless payments, applications for technologies that were once considered too complicated have now become desperately needed solutions. But the nature of these solutions is that they must be built by ecosystems and consortiums of collaborators—not independently. An ecosystem-forward approach can drive the most value for the healthcare ecosystem as a whole.

When you're better able to transact, share data, and shift between partners seamlessly and securely, you have an advantage in driving industry-level change that enables better care for people.

Rapid digitisation during the pandemic paved the way for healthcare enterprises to rethink partnerships. And now every organisation is accelerating its cloud transformation at once. New partnerships will form and industry boundaries blur as companies merge and combine their growing cloud capabilities in exciting new ways. This will continue to accelerate as health vertical cloud solutions continue to emerge in the market.¹ But you can’t play the game if you don’t have the right equipment. The most immediate step organisations need to take is to make sure they have the foundation needed to participate in this ecosystem economy.

Cloud is the cost of admission to digital health ecosystems, but multiparty systems are effectively deeply rooted transformation in the way organisations partner and how industries operate. Multiparty systems build on traditional partnerships and take them a step further. They rebalance cooperation and benefits among participants, forge lines of transparency and establish trust in ways that other systems and partnerships cannot. They generate equitable relationships among partners and lines of sight into previously masked areas of the value chain. This is why building a multiparty system requires more than a technology investment—healthcare organisations must also establish a consortium that governs the networks that are built to guarantee a trusted and secure common environment based on common technology standards.

As part of governance, healthcare organisations and the ecosystems they participate in must ensure the seamless transfer of data to drive the most value out of the partnerships. How well multiparty systems are architected will also determine if the ecosystem reaches its full potential. Even the most advanced multiparty systems can be rendered ancillary by rigid technology that keep data self-contained. Even worse, with bad data, it’s stretching the old axiom of "garbage in, garbage out" to "garbage in, garbage forever."

Partnerships are taking centre stage as healthcare organisations begin to set ground rules for the post-pandemic world, constructing new ecosystem-based models. But just as multiparty systems drive benefit for everyone in the ecosystem, it’s important that healthcare organisations embarking on these undertakings do it with a wider perspective of what value means.

There are ambitious ecosystem efforts underway right now, many spawned by the challenges of COVID-19 but designed to far outlast its impacts. At their zenith they will transform the world. If you’ve hesitated to explore a full ecosystem approach, now is the time to recognise the opportunity; if you’ve already been exploring, it’s time to move beyond small-scale implementation and become a leading partner in shaping healthcare of tomorrow.

Fortify: How are digitally led partnerships driving value for your organisation?
Review what platforms your organisation—or healthcare consumers—leaned on most in the last year. Take advantage of cloud solutions and have a strategy for using these solutions to enhance ecosystem collaboration.

Extend: Is your organisation ready to participate in multiparty systems?
Designate a team to scan prominent multiparty systems emerging in healthcare—the current and long-term impacts, and the organisation’s relative preparedness to engage them. Make understanding the technology, identifying technical partners and providers, and addressing skills gaps a priority. Evaluate the business case that will drive your participation.

Reinvent: Which relationships will be transformed by the growth of multiparty systems?
Interview strategic partners to understand their exposure to multiparty systems. Consider running strategic foresight exercises with these partners to evaluate the need and impact of a multiparty system. Consider joining industry consortiums or establishing a working group of inter-enterprise partners.

¹ The cloud imperative in healthcare