| | December 20198UTLOOK Healthcare Tech By Ed Kopetsky, CIO of Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, Stanford Children's HealthCIO Perspective: Becoming a Digitally Empowered Health NetworkAmong hospital and health system leaders, implementing digital health technologies is a shared focus across the industry. Key among the goals for digital health are to reshape the ways physicians and patients interact and share health information, and to virtualize visits and data collection to enable better access to care and continuous data management when needed. Collectively, digital health tools are perhaps the greatest enablers to establish new care models built around the patient and family in their daily lives.Digital health initiatives are central to being on the leading edge of the evolving health care landscape. And for our hospital and network, it is essential to advancing care as well as minimizing the burden of travel and time on our patients and families. In pediatric care especially, families with children who have complex care needs are primary benefactors of these technologies. Many of our patients have long term and continuous care needs well served by emerging digital health technologies. As I've experienced integrating digital health services into the Stanford Children's Health system, scaling, platform integration, cross-organization collaboration and adoption have stood out as keys to successful implementation. Scaling Digital HealthAt Stanford Children's Health we are focused on transforming healthcare for mothers and children worldwide through technology -- by making it faster, safer and easier. We need to scale our digital health offerings to keep up with our patients' needs. One of the ways we have done this is through enhanced access to telehealth services by enabling patients to connect with their care team from multiple clinic sites and via mobile. We are aggressively expanding telehealth programs across our broad range of specialty services and our community network. In 2018, we have enabled 24 additional sites of care for telehealth, and have exceeded our goal for new visits. We are targeting a 10x growth in telehealth visits over the next two years.By providing accessible, unified care experiences via digital connectivity, we can innovate and standardize high-quality outpatient care. When it comes to implementing this model, I encourage healthcare leaders to keep in mind that the rate IN MY OPINION | | December 20198UTLOOK Healthcare Tech
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