Technology, demographics and new customer expectations are transforming healthcare. But few are ready.

Most healthcare CEOs plan to make changes to address the many ways in which customers’ expectations are evolving: 94% plan to alter their customer growth and retention strategies, while 84% plan to alter their channels to market. Few have embarked on these changes, though, let alone completed them.

86% of healthcare CEOs believe technological advances will transform their businesses in the next five years. And they’re far more conscious than other CEOs of the huge role demographics will play – 84% see it as a transformative trend, compared to just 60% across the sample.

New frontiers in healthcare
Technology is already having a far-reaching impact on healthcare delivery and CEOs are already planning ways to take advantage of this trend: 89% plan to improve their ability to innovate; 93% plan to change their technology investments; and 95% are exploring better ways of using and managing big data.

But there’s a big gap between where healthcare CEOs are now, and where they want to be. Only 25% have already started or completed the changes they’re planning to make their companies more innovative. Only 33% have altered their technology investments, and only 36% have made any headway in getting to grips with big data.

Healthcare companies need to get better prepared
Why the delay? Only 31% say their R&D functions are well prepared, and only 41% say their IT functions are well prepared, to capitalise on the trends now reshaping the world.

Concerns that a newer technology could render their efforts obsolete are a likely factor: 57% of healthcare CEOs are worried about the speed at which technology is progressing. That’s far more than across the sample as a whole.

Healthcare CEOs are focusing on collaboration
To address the changing landscape, healthcare CEOs are also actively looking at transactions. More than half have entered into a joint venture or strategic alliance in the past 12 months (vs. one third of the total sample) and a full 69% plan to do so in the coming 12 months (versus 44% of the total sample).

Still, they acknowledge they could get better: more than four-fifths of all healthcare CEOs concede that they either need to change, or are already changing, their strategies for initiating such arrangements.

Read: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-survey/2014/industry/healthcare.jhtml

Read: https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Tracking_global_trends/$FILE/Tracking%20global%20trends.pdf