Home

Topics: Strategy, Health

Annelise Vedel
Global Managing Partner, Health Innovation
Send an email

In a fast-paced global landscape, every project and business must consider the dynamics of change. The healthcare industry is no exception. Emerging technologies, changing consumer behaviour, remote working, global pandemics – there is a lot to navigate.

Key for any business is to understand the landscape of change and proactively strategise and adapt to secure short and long-term competitiveness.

Focusing specifically on healthcare companies, we've identified four major currents of change that are specifically impacting the healthcare industry.

Informed by these, while exploring the commercial and strategic potential of creative technologies and services, healthcare companies can find new ways to create experiences that bring the customer closer to the company.

Beyond purpose

Societal and environmental changes are pushing companies in the healthcare industry to position themselves - and to timely act on matters beyond their core product and service focus. Purpose creates trust in a world where trust is challenged like never before.

Companies in the healthcare industry need to stand strong behind their purpose and demonstrate – by voice and action – a sincere intent to help solve societal and environmental challenges. Doing good for people, planet and nature is good for business!

Technologies of tomorrow

New technologies and digital tools for communication are increasingly becoming an integral part of any company, and these are shaping strategies, along with business and customer experience in new meaningful ways. In the healthcare industry, new technologies offer the potential for direct improvements on products leading to better compliance and potential outcomes.

Further, behavioural data, when handled according to ethical and legal standards, provides fruitful insights into behaviour and preferences that can be used for product innovation and more individualised communication to healthcare professionals and patients.

Compared to other sectors, many companies in the healthcare industry are simply lagging on digital transformation. But COVID-19 has now enforced a gigantic leap forward on their digital journey. Keep it up!

Patient empowerment

Patients demand to be truly empowered. They educate themselves on-line at all stages of their disease, discuss their conditions and medications with peers on social media and expect the best treatments. They challenge their doctor and expect an individualised approach at all times. Although the healthcare professional remains an important and direct customer for many pharma and med-tech companies patient empowerment is becoming more and more important.

Throughout the industry, the full patient journey needs to be understood and leveraged to ensure meaningful interactions with patients - while overcoming legal and regulatory barriers. A strong patient focus is needed to secure patient engagement, advocacy and improve treatment adherence.

Ecosystem excellence

To be successful it is no longer sufficient to measure against ‘best-in-industry’ and rely solely on in-house developments and initiatives. New partnerships and closely-knit ecosystems offer new opportunities. Adapting to new ways of working and engaging in new constellations give a competitive edge today and tomorrow.

For the industry, this means working closer with important players, not necessarily native to the industry; to optimise customer reach and engagement.

Transformation is needed to obtain a sufficient level of agility for new ways of doing business. Acknowledged, it can be difficult to strike the perfect balance between ‘organisational agility’ on the one hand - and ‘long development lead-times and robust processes’ on the other. And this is where management must lead the way!

Download the white paper

In our podcast 'Everything that's next' we invite an industry leader to discuss what's next. In this episode, we focus on the pharma industry and with our guest, Novo Nordisk's Camilla Sylvest, we discuss strategies and approaches to digital transformation.

Our work in healthcare

What does the future of living look like? That question defines the nature of our work with OBOS, one of the largest public housing companies in the Nordics. Together, we’re prototyping the future of living.

The Point-of-Care (PoC) Coagulometer by Perosphere Technologies is a breakthrough and industry-defining medical device within emergency care. Together with Perosphere Technologies we helped transform their innovative technology into a compelling story.

Oticon released a new flagship product: OPN Sound. To showcase the benefits of this new technology, we built a virtual reality experience that allows users to experience how it feels to be hearing impaired.

Shaping the future of healthcare