What is equitable, tech-enabled care?

In so many ways, technology has democratized access--to information, food, transportation, the list goes on. And when it comes to healthcare, globally, it’s true that technology has been effectively deployed to improve supply chains for critical drugs for malaria, combat counterfeit medicines, remind people to take their Tuberculosis treatment, provide prenatal advice, extend healthcare in remote, hard to reach settings, and communicate rapidly during a disaster or communicable epidemic (now pandemic). 

In the U.S., however, the digital health market and tech-enabled health care services have largely been dominated by founders that have access to capital. As a result, too many tech-enabled health services and products are designed to reflect a singular experience. It is not surprising then that the early US digital health market and particularly wearables organically found its match among a largely healthy, system savvy, younger population, and as digital health has evolved the question remains of who is adopting these technologies? Are they meeting the challenges and needs of people who are disproportionately getting and dying from illness whether chronically or acutely?

Let’s be honest, the only way that we are ever going to “revolutionize” healthcare, delivering customers and payers value, is if we tackle the really complex needs of groups who disproportionately struggle to access convenient care and have worse outcomes than the rest of the population even when you account for factors like age, education, and socioeconomic status. Recently, as a society we have started to call out the differential access to capital and the lack of diversity in founders creating new technologies and leadership teams. I also challenge us to look at the demographics of adoption. From benefit administrators to Chief Medical Officers, I challenge you to ask your vendors what adoption and outcomes look like across incredibly diverse populations, living in zip codes that often share little in common. 

We can design it all differently

The numbers are clear, diverse companies are approximately 70% more likely to capture new markets. And with the majority of the US population becoming people of color by 2040, the opportunity to more intentionally design for diversity is not just the right thing to do but probably the profitable thing as well. As it stands today, minorities in the US account for $4 trillion in buying power. Yet there is an uncanny concentration of resources--the nice supermarkets, right type of schools, green spaces, hospitals, COVID testing centers, COVID vaccination sites- in neighborhoods in the United States, often falling along color lines. The pandemic has magnified this gap, and while we are seeing the rapid uptake of technology across sectors, again groups are being left behind.

While the digital divide in healthcare is real, I know that we still have never been more poised to leverage technology to bring equity to wellbeing. What does this look like? It means designing omnichannel services and products to reach the last mile and meet people where they need to be met in the way they need to be met. This is why I am passionate about what I have started to call equitable, tech-enabled care. It is about intentionally designing tech-enabled services that meet people’s diverse needs. At the same time it’s about counteracting entrenched biases and acknowledging the everyday reality of how the neighborhoods we live in and the buying power we have directly impacts our ability to live full, healthy lives.

At Health DesignED, we are deep in the work of designing across the digital divide-- tackling COVID inequities alongside access to care in rural and urban settings, whether in the US or globally. We are committed to knitting together a seamless experience for patients that redefines the boundaries of traditional brick and mortar health care. We have started to partner with pioneering companies like access.mobile and Vital that tackle messy problems that extend beyond the silos of hospitals, behavior, and neighborhoods from different angles, with iterative design. We are committed to convening our ecosystem- an unexpected group of compatriots from Fortune 100 companies to startups from designers to academics and developers to data scientists and investors to philanthropists. Capitalists to Activists.

Join the conversation at HealthDesignED’s Equitable Tech Enabled Care Summit in May. If you believe in equity in wellbeing, become one of our early donors today.