Digital Health Innovations
Unleashing the Power of "Digital" for Healthcare Providers

“Digital is not the latest piece of technology. Digital is a way of doing business.”

Deeply resonating with this mantra, Digital Health Innovations (DHI)—a leading digital value (DV$) stream consulting firm—paves a unique path for healthcare organizations to gear up for the digital future. Amidst the digital revolution, healthcare executive teams are exploring newer and more promising ways to increase operational viability, improve margins, and strengthen community presence. Leadership teams must embrace the digital-first mentality to deliver better care, make informed decisions, improve workforce engagement while complying with stringent regulations and optimizing their revenue cycle/reimbursement operations. With a steadfast dedication to innovation, DHI specializes in empowering healthcare industry stakeholders with digital innovation to create newer business opportunities and revenue streams.

Founded by industry professionals with years of unmatched experience and expertise in crafting compelling digital strategies, DHI has developed a unique DV$ creation approach to help hospitals improve clinical outcomes, operational excellence, and financial stability. “Everybody has to be digitally literate and step up to the challenge of becoming a digital-first organization,” says Alice Khosravy, Chief Digital Innovation Officer at Digital Health Innovations. As a digital innovation leader, Alice helps organizations derive strategic value and accelerate their roadmap to operational excellence with cutting-edge industry best practices.

In an interview with the editorial team of CIO Applications, Alice discusses at length how DHI creates tangible digital health value, improves clinical outcomes, and optimizes financial outcomes for healthcare industry stakeholders while helping them navigate the intricate regulatory landscape.

Could you provide a brief overview of DHI?

DHI has carved out a new market by specializing in modern digital innovation strategy, tools, and techniques designed for healthcare executives. We turn digital innovation into a competitive advantage and create value that customers can quantify in terms of not only the profit line but also the overall value of the organization. While there are different levers that can be used to achieve this, the one we specialize in is digital innovation.

What are some of the major challenges that healthcare organizations face today?

In the past, although organizations wanted to derive the maximum value out of digital strategies, they depended on the IT teams to figure out ways to achieve it. But this kind of approach is outdated. It is important for organizational leaders to have both digital knowledge and business knowledge in order to operate in a digital-first environment. This means the CIOs, as well as the IT professionals in an organization, must become more business literate.

In order to compete in the new marketplace, an organization should have people who have expertise in both “digital” and “business” because they are rapidly fusing together. Digital capabilities are imperative for organizations today to create and roll out new services and products in the marketplace.

Digital transformation is more complex today than it was a decade ago. In the wake of the pandemic, healthcare organizations and patients were compelled to embrace digital routes, further raising patient expectations. Prior to the pandemic, there was an industry mis-conception that seniors could not or would not engage digitally. Not only did nearly all populations prove they could access and navigate digital mediums, but also patients are now requesting additional features. This is particularly true of digital front doors. However, a real struggle remains in the rural health environment, as many people do not have access to good broadband service.

In addition, there is an upcoming shortage of talent within healthcare organizations; we will have an extreme talent crunch in the healthcare industry by 2030. Leadership teams are struggling to understand how to use digital as a way to compensate for the talent shortage and retain and engage their current talent pool. If organizations deploy “digital” correctly, it will allow them to follow a more human approach to critical operations while automating mundane, timeintensive tasks.

Could you shed light on the digital value strategy you offer and the benefits it delivers to clients?

Most leadership teams have grown skeptical of the sky-high ROIs promised by consulting firms when presenting digital transformation projects. They are also frustrated with the way ROIs are calculated. They have questions regarding the maintenance of the product and the changes that might have to be incorporated as well as the costs involved in doing so. With our DV$ approach, we take into account all these aspects along with operational and regulatory changes to create a value stream map all the way to the bottom line that the CFO and the CEO can see. They can gain a better understanding of not only the total impact of the digital strategy and the way to measure it but also how to troubleshoot any issues lying in the way to improving bottom lines. In this way, the leadership teams can go back upstream, determine where the issue is, and resolve it.

What is the approach you take while delivering services to your clients?

When we undertake a project, we first ensure that the executive leaders are committed to becoming a digital-first organization. The first thing we look for is the right environment and culture in the organization so that we can deliver what we promise to our clients. Since we don't operate as a typical digital transformation consulting firm, we focus on helping business leaders achieve the digital-first mentality. After the initial conversation, we chalk out a vision of their goals and the various technological capabilities and possibilities that they can leverage. This is quite challenging for the leadership teams because they don’t have the time to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest piece of technology or new revenue streams from a digital standpoint. We narrow down what will be appropriate for customers and help them map out a future-proof strategy.

What, according to you, steers you ahead of the market competition?

What makes us unique in the industry is that we are a team of experts who have run organizational teams at an operational level in a healthcare environment. We are backed by operational leaders with appropriate technical skills who have led revenue cycle and clinical departments. As such, we not only model the digital innovation strategies but also help customers overcome challenges in different areas throughout their digital transformation journey.

What does the future look like for DHI?

We are heavily focused on digital revenue streams for healthcare organizations. This could be through digital product or service creations and data monetization. Many organizations are unaware of the digital revenue stream possibilities. Bringing this expertise to them at a time of uncertainty can provide stability as they prepare for the marketplace of the future.