NOVEMBER - 20209threats and opportunities and identify unique consumer, community, and provider needs. Scenario PlanningStress testing of strategies is required, using a wide range of scenarios to prepare the organization for extreme situations and a very different post-crisis reality.Financial and Non-Financial Value Testing Build a comprehensive financial and non-financial value model defining the current and future effect that virtual care initiatives will have on operational and clinical outcomes.Technology Partner Selection In recent years, medical technology companies have made a significant investment in developing comprehensive, platform-centric virtual care solutions--and this effort has only intensified with the pandemic. Providers will discover a growing array of technologies to help position their organizations for long-term growth leveraging virtual care.Governance and an Integrated Operating ModelTo be sustainable, it's critical for virtual care initiatives to align with enterprise strategies, be visibly supported and sponsored by leadership, and have governance structures that guide decision-making, use of data, transparency, and accountability.Provider and Consumer EngagementBased on insights from the market analysis and provider needs assessment, develop a robust consumer engagement strategy and provider change management plan.Relentless Performance MeasurementThe COVID-19 crisis has levied a significant financial toll on hospitals and health systems. There is no margin for error with investment decisions going forward and each one must be vetted stringently and monitored relentlessly so that the desired return is realized. Optimize and Scale High-Value Service LinesOptimize and standardize the solution across your portfolio of facilities. Ensure value priorities are exceeded and activate a comprehensive stakeholder communication plan.Refresh your virtual care roadmap to include high-value service lines and create an adaptable plan to align with evolving strategic priorities Virtual care platform technologies have the potential to scale in the same manner as a smartphone, where the value of the upfront investment expands based on app extensions. Once the upfront technology investment is made in virtual care, adding new service lines to enhance value requires incremental costs with exponential benefits as the footprint scales (ex: virtual ICU scaled to ED, L&D, Radiology, et al). An unprecedented opportunity to evolveThe COVID-19 pandemic forced an industry-wide challenge to rethink and reshape healthcare for the better. How will healthcare organizations adapt and evolve going forward?Across GE Healthcare, we rapidly mobilized to drive innovation in response to the global pandemic. For example, to help hospitals better manage critical care patients by scaling scarce physician and nursing resources, GE Healthcare swiftly adapted its Mural virtual hospital solution to a cloud-based solution. This allowed rapid deployments in as few as 30 days ­ and we're expanding this capability beyond the US to global markets. In addition, GE also announced research to test how AI can help predict COVID-19 severity in collaboration with the University of Oxford and Paris hospitals. As the saying goes, "necessity is the mother of innovation" and there are other examples within GE and GE Healthcare and across many organizations that have risen to the challenge during these unprecedented times.The commonalities among these initiatives--creative partnering, rapid product development and deployment globally, and flexible use of capacity--are all powerfully effective principles we hope to expand on in the future. In a similar vein, hospitals and health systems will have opportunities to move more aggressively into mutually beneficial partnerships and mergers that leverage individual strengths, direct more capital investments toward intelligent health technologies that improve clinical and non-clinical outcomes, and rethink physical and virtual capacity in new ways to achieve cost-effective growth.COVID-19 has highlighted the need to build, invest in, and scale a modern digital infrastructure that enables an intelligence-based health system. The pandemic has created a new urgency to evolve, and the opportunity to make real progress is here.
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