When your hospital system is smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley, the need to innovate digitally becomes personal.

“If you look where we are based and who our patients are, our patients are employees of people who have worked here in the valley,” Aditya Bhasin, VP of software at Stanford Health Care, told MobiHealthNews. “They’re the guys who are creating the consumerization experiences we are all experiencing. We get patients from Uber, Airbnb, Apple, Facebook, Iago, Google. … So when they come to healthcare their expectations are completely off.”

Bhasin said Stanford stepped up to this challenge by introducing app-based check-in and wayfinding to their digital strategy. And, in addition to the features themselves, the system has made a point of integrating them into a streamlined experience.

“What we’ve seen is people cling to a lot of disparate third-party solutions to achieve point solutions, which create a fragmented solution. … You’re selecting one solution for maps, another solution for check-in, another solution for patient education and you white label all of these things and string them together,” Bhasin said. “But if you go and look at your Airbnb experience or your Uber experience, it’s not like your payment provider is completely fragmented separate app that you downloaded, your scheduling app isn’t another one and your main customer app isn’t another one. So how you create that integrated experience, I think, is key. And how we’ve approached it [is] by creating a platform and integrating partners by APIs and SDKs.”

In the Bay Area, Bhasin said, digital strategy has become a competitive differentiator as all the local hospitals feel the pressure to offer a digital experience. That’s prompted the health system to do a little soul searching.

“I think it behooves you to have a unique point of view, not a generic one, and be able to deliver your unique point of view,” he said. “What does your organization stand for, what experience do you want to offer, and how do you create the ability to offer that experience? And therein lies your ability, in a geography where you’re competing with other healthcare organizations, to create your own brand and your own experience.”

At HIMSS19, Bhasin will talk more about Stanford’s own journey and strategy. But he also hopes to engage the audience about the unique challenges of their own geographies and demographics.

His session is entitled “Elevating the Patient’s Digital Experience.” It’s scheduled for Tuesday, February 12 from 12:00–1:00 p.m. in room W311A.