#noting how digitalization has fundamentally changed how financial institutions engage with customers.

[nickyysharmi]

Bridging Horizons: The Digital Journey Of India's Heartland

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, the empowerment of citizens from small towns in India stands out as a compelling narrative. Spearheaded by initiatives like Digital India and fueled by the visionary leadership of individuals like Abhay Bhutada, Poonawalla Fincorp’s Managing Director, digitalization has emerged as the catalyst for transformation, unlocking new avenues of growth and opportunity for millions across the heartland of India.

The Digital Revolution Unleashed

The journey towards digital empowerment in India has been remarkable, marked by a surge in internet connectivity and smartphone usage. This surge has effectively broken down barriers to accessing and adopting digital technologies. Individuals like Abhay Bhutada from Latur, Maharashtra, epitomize this transformative shift, emphasizing how digitalization has empowered people in small towns, instilling in them a sense of confidence and belief in their ability to contribute to nation-building. This digital revolution has also reshaped the banking landscape, blending traditional banks with innovative fintech startups. Amitabh Chaudhry, Managing Director and CEO of Axis Bank, highlights this evolution, noting how digitalization has fundamentally changed how financial institutions engage with customers.

Also Read: MD Abhay Bhutada Provides Glimpse of Poonawalla’s Co-Branded Card Strategy in Q4

A Paradigm Shift In Banking

Central to this narrative of empowerment is the revolution unfolding within the banking sector. The advent of digital banking has revolutionized the way financial services are accessed and utilized. Mobile applications, online payments, and digital wallets have become ubiquitous, offering individuals seamless and secure channels to manage their finances. This shift has been particularly significant for citizens in small towns, where traditional banking infrastructure may have been limited.

Leading The Global Charge

India's prowess in digital payments is exemplified by its leadership in real-time transactions through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). With over 600 million smartphone users, the country boasts a vibrant digital payments ecosystem, recording billions of transactions each month. Abhay Bhutada's insights resonate strongly here, showcasing how digitalization has transcended geographical barriers, empowering individuals from small towns to participate actively in the digital economy.

Also Read: Abhay Bhutada Shares Insights on Poonawalla Fincorp’s Long-Term Objectives

Empowering Entrepreneurs And Innovators

The democratization of access to financial services has also catalyzed entrepreneurial endeavors across small towns in India. Fintech startups, in particular, have emerged as key enablers of financial inclusion, leveraging technology to address the unique needs of underserved communities. Through innovative solutions and agile business models, these startups are driving economic growth and fostering innovation at the grassroots level.

Navigating The Digital Divide

Despite the remarkable progress, challenges persist in bridging the digital divide. Connectivity issues, digital literacy, and infrastructural constraints remain hurdles that need to be addressed to ensure equitable access to digital services. Abhay Bhutada's vision for an inclusive digital future underscores the importance of concerted efforts to overcome these challenges and extend the benefits of digitalization to every corner of the country.

Also Read: Abhay Bhutada wins a Special Recognition at Lokmat Maharashtrian of the Year

Charting A Path Forward

As India continues its journey towards digital empowerment, collaboration and innovation will be key drivers of progress. By harnessing the transformative power of technology and fostering an ecosystem of inclusivity and accessibility, we can unlock the full potential of India's heartland. Abhay Bhutada's leadership serves as a guiding light, inspiring individuals and institutions alike to embrace the opportunities presented by the digital revolution and contribute towards building a brighter, more prosperous future for all.

In conclusion, the digitalization of India's heartland represents a watershed moment in the country's socio-economic trajectory. Empowered by technology and driven by a spirit of resilience and innovation, citizens from small towns are rewriting the narrative of progress and prosperity. With visionary leaders like Abhay Bhutada at the forefront, the digital renaissance unfolding across India's heartland holds the promise of a more inclusive, equitable, and dynamic future for all.

[cecillewhite]

Customer Engagement Metrics: What Marketers Can Teach Learning Pros

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Because extended enterprise learning involves multiple disciplines, we sometimes ask other experts to share their insights with our readers. Today we feature engagement metrics advice from Laura Patterson, President of VisionEdge Marketing. Laura is widely recognized as an authority in marketing measurement and performance, content management, marketing operations and data analytics.

  Why Do Engagement Metrics Matter?

In 2008, independent think tank Institute for the Future published a groundbreaking analysis, “Engagement Economy: The Future of Massively Scaled Collaboration and Participation.” This concept quickly gained traction and is now considered a cornerstone of customer-centered marketing and digital transformation.

The premise is simple:  To develop valuable relationships, organizations must involve customers in personalized experiences that are meaningful, genuine and useful.

The Engagement Economy rests on the fact that people and things are now continuously connected. This means marketers must focus on understanding how people interact with their brand, their products and their organization, across all touch points.

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Of course, this also requires a different approach to measurement. We need to focus less on lead generation and more on valuable interactions that strengthen relationships. In other words, according to Gallup research, engagement metrics matter.

Business Implications

The Engagement Economy demands a different mindset – one that is intensely focused on creating customer value. For example, successful organizations are committed to:

Flipping the value chain, so customer needs, wants and priorities drive organizational investments in products, services, content and communication channels.

Optimizing customer experiences with processes, systems and tools that make it possible to engage customers on their terms and reinforce those relationships over time.

Developing a customer strategy based on purchase readiness and long-term loyalty.

3 Powerful Engagement Metrics

To thrive in the Engagement Economy, organizations must be prepared to demonstrate how their efforts resonate with customers and tie back to the bottom line.

As marketing strategists, we’re often asked, “What is the best way to measure engagement?” Truthfully, there is no magic one-size-fits-all metric.

However, we do recommend that customer-focused professionals consider three broader engagement metrics. Each of these has financial implications that can serve as a useful barometer for a program’s performance and strategic contribution:

1) Share of Wallet

Business growth comes in two fundamental ways: When you acquire new customers and when you expand your overall footprint among those you already serve. Expansion takes several forms. For example, customers may:

Buy more of a product they previously purchased from you, thereby increasing their volume of usage;

Buy more of a product to use in a completely new way;

Buy new products they haven’t previously purchased;

Any combination of the above.

Each of these scenarios contributes to an increase in what is referred to as “share of wallet.” The total amount a customer spends in any given product category is considered the “wallet.” Share of wallet, then, is a ratio that compares how much a customer spends with your organization vs. the customer’s overall spending in that category.

For example, assuming a customer spends $100,000 a year on software, but only $10,000 a year on software from you, your company’s share of wallet = 10%.

This metric helps organizations understand where added value may exist within their customer portfolio. In other words, you can identify your most loyal and profitable customers, as well as those with greatest growth potential.

Note that when evaluating this metric, both the ratio and actual values are important. The first reflects existing share of wallet, while the second indicates potential value.

2) Customer Stickiness

Most research supports the claim that acquiring new customers is more expensive than retaining current customers.

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For instance, some studies suggest that a 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10%, and a 5% improvement in retention can increase profits 25-125%, depending on the industry.

There is also solid data suggesting that companies with high customer retention grow faster. Therefore, it’s important to know just how “sticky” your customers are. You can determine stickiness with engagement metrics that evaluate both customer churn and customer retention rates.

1) CUSTOMER CHURN

A simple churn calculation looks like this:

Churn Rate = Customers lost during a specific timeframe/total customers during that same timeframe

While it is important to understand the rate at which you’re losing customers, you’ll also want to calculate associated lost revenues.

2) CUSTOMER RETENTION

Calculating your customer retention rate is slightly different.

First, identify the total number of customers at the end of a given timeframe. Then subtract any new customers acquired during that period. Divide this number by the total number of customers at the start. And finally, multiply by 100. Specifically:

Retention Rate = [(Number of customers at the end of a time period) – (Number of customers acquired during the time period)/(Total number of customers at the start of the time period)] *100

The key to understanding stickiness is knowing how many customers are defecting, and why – as well as how many are staying, and why. Customers may leave for different reasons than those who stay. However, their respective rationales don’t have to be exact opposites.

For example, many customers might stay because switching is extremely difficult. While others may choose to leave because technical support is poor. It is important to consider both sides of the equation.

3) Customer Lifetime Value

Without customers, you don’t have a business. Therefore, it’s important to recognize that customers are your organization’s most valuable asset. The longer a customer remains loyal, the more value that customer creates, both in terms of real revenue and hopefully referral business.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a measure that represents the financial value of a customer over the entire life cycle of that relationship. Determining which customer types/profiles yield the highest CLV helps organizations prioritize customer experience investments.

There are various ways to calculate CLV. But essentially, CLV is built on this core equation:

CLV = (Frequency of Purchase) X (Duration of Loyalty) X (Gross Profit)

It’s worth noting that best-in-class organizations are significantly better at influencing this metric than their competitors.

Shifting From Lead Generation to Customer Engagement and Retention

If your organization hasn’t yet embraced an Engagement Economy philosophy, brace yourself. Moving from a traditional lead-generation mindset to customer-centered behaviors and engagement metrics can be an uphill battle.

When companies have invested many years of experience working in a particular way, it’s hard to shift in another direction. That’s why it helps to approach this process as a full-scale cultural change initiative.

Although it takes much more than engagement metrics to become a customer-centered company, you can begin building a case for change. Start by gathering available data and establishing benchmarks for the metrics outlined above.

  EDITOR’S NOTE: This post has been adapted, with permission, from a post published on V3 Broadsuite.

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Bridging the Learning Analytics Gap: How Guided Insights Lead to Better Results

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Join John Leh, CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, and Tamer Ali, Co-Founder and Director at Authentic Learning Labs. You’ll discover:

Top learning analytics challenges

How AI-driven data visualization tools are transforming learning insights

How to define and interpret relevant metrics

Practical examples of AI-based analytics in action

How to build a convincing case for guided analytics

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[ncmagroup]

As Director of the Revenue Enablement Institute and member of the Forbes CMO Practice, I teach growth leaders how to grow revenues, profits, and firm value and maximize the return on growth assets and investments.

The coronavirus is battering the economy and creating uncertainty about future demand. The global economy is forecast to contract by 3% as billions of employees, customers, and consumers are unable to leave their homes, travel, shop or in some cases work. This has paralyzed entire industries, although created opportunities for others. The uncertainty about the future is so great that 20% of the corporations in the S&P1500 have withdrawn investor guidance on revenues and profits for the coming year.

Every economic crisis has both winners and losers warns Dave Reibstein, Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of Business. “During various major crises that affect the economy—9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and now the global spread of Covid-19 – all the players in the economy are not affected equally. Certainly, large segments like retail, restaurants, and travel are negatively impacted; but, there also will be economic benefactors with Covid-19. Some of the obvious businesses that gain sales are hand sanitizers, remote communications technology, home food delivery, and streaming services, just to name a few. Still, others will adapt to seize the opportunity in the crisis. We are already seeing a variety of businesses pivoting their focus to help scale drug testing and health care capacity, supporting the virtual enterprise, or plugging holes in broken supply chains.

In a crisis like this, leaders must laser-focus their organizations on survival, employee health, liquidity, protecting customer relationships, and maintaining supply chains. For the past 90 days, sales and marketing leaders around the globe have been leading crisis task forces to understand and manage the immediate impact the Covid-19 virus is having on-demand and consequently on sales and marketing resource allocation, budgets, investments, and plans.

  REVENUE ENABLEMENT INSTITUTE

In addition to making painful budget choices, growth leaders must also remain aware of the structural changes going on around them and keep an eye on the long term. Because when the “bottom” comes into sight in several months, every business will turn their attention to rebuilding and adapting to the new normal. “Many of the gains made during the crisis will become permanent” notes Reibstein. “For example, we can fully expect a faster transition to virtual meetings, classrooms, and selling models that will become permanent after the crisis is long past. Direct online selling will get a boost that will not just rebound back to its pre-disease levels, but we will find a hysteresis, that is a long-term effect.

Mo Katibeh, the CMO of AT&T agrees. “We are seeing a variety of businesses benefit from the dramatic increases in usage of video games, OTT streaming video, and unified communications in the wake of shelter-in-place orders. And longer term, we expect that telehealth and tele-learning will gain a strong foothold in a post-Covid economy. There will also be secondary effects of changing behavior – such as the accelerated growth of available but not yet broadly adopted technologies like robotics in retail, augmented reality in selling channels, and as a training enabler, and Business 5G deployed at hospitals, factories, and entertainment venues.”

There are seven questions every growth leader needs to be asking at the dawn of the Covid-19 economy to anticipate the short, medium, and long-term impacts on their growth potential and strategies.

1 HOW CAN MY FIRM CONTRIBUTE TO THE SOLUTION? In the wake of the coronavirus, companies are either victims, essential services to surviving the crisis, or quickly pivoting to become part of the solution and recovery. CMOs must ask to what degree is their business able to solve problems and provide relief to build customer goodwill, reinforce their brand purpose, and support their corporate social responsibility agenda? “A lot of our clients are looking for help pivoting to reposition in this environment and take advantage of opportunities, address existential threats, and invent new services and solutions that address the disruption caused by the Covid-19 outbreak,” according to toEd Keller. “Our clients are largely trying to either maintain essential services/functions in a remote work environment or rushing to position for aid from the $2 Trillion CARES act. I’m using Maslow’s hierarchy as an example – people are focused on meeting basic, existential needs; clients aren’t interested in strategy work or even mundane operating improvements. They are really focused on running the basic machinery.

2 IS THIS THE TIME TO BE CUTTING? As the economic toll of Covid-19 mounts, there will be constant pressure to reduce “unnecessary” expenses. “Every business is taking a hard look at all spending, including sales and marketing, to survive in the Covid-19 crisis,” reports Chris Hummel, the CMO of United Rentals. “We’re no different. Marketing can be a particularly juicy target for cost-cutting, especially since the cuts are considered “painless.” Not so fast. Cuts in marketing usually drag down demand and sales, so what happens when the revenue hole created outweighs cost savings?” Professor Reibstein reminds business leaders with the luxury of retaining marketing spend to consider the opportunities a crisis like this presents. “Cost cuts are inevitable in the crisis and marketing expenditures are often fungible. That said, while others are spending less, it makes whatever spending remains more effective,” according to Reibstein. “Those that invested during the 2008 financial crisis, thrived while others fled. “Share of voice” will never be greater. Massive industries, such as all travel-related as well as political advertising are down considerably at the same time people are in front of their screens more than ever and attention may never be greater. This may be the time to invest, that is if the business can afford to.”

3 HOW DO WE LEAD AND ENABLE REMOTE REVENUE TEAMS IN A CRISIS? Managing, coaching, and motivating sales, call center, and service employees in a work in the home environment are creating immense challenges for sales leaders. “From a sales channel perspective, organizations are quickly adapting to having tens of thousands of salespeople, call-center representatives, and customer support agents working from home, shares Mo Katibeh of AT&T. “They are rushing to provide their front-line customer-facing employees with the systems, support, and communications infrastructure they need to engage, retain, and acquire customers in a work at home setting. This includes fundamental hardware like PCs, mobility enabled hot spots, collaboration applications, and remote access VPN capability to give them the secure and scalable access to the applications, systems, networks, and databases they need to do their jobs from home productively as well as support high quality videoconferencing experiences.”

4 WHERE WILL CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT COME FROM? Sales teams will need to replace the millions of face-to-face sales meetings that vanished with restrictions on business travel and the cancellation, delay, or digital conversion of thousands of industry conferences, events, and forums. For example, SXSW canceled its annual event which draws 280,000 attendees. “A big change will be adapting to selling without the benefit of face-to-face interaction in sales meetings or the many sales conferences, events, or trade shows in the industries we serve” shares Ed Keller, the CMO of Guidehouse. “In particular our relationship leaders are facing challenging times when forced to work remotely because they rely heavily on in-person buyer engagement to build the trust needed to acquire net new client relationships.”

5 WHERE WILL THE MEDIA EYEBALLS COME FROM? CMOs must find ways to replace the billions of “live eyeballs” that were lost with the cancellation or delay of live sports, entertainment, and arts sponsorship events to build awareness and demand for their offerings. Before the coronavirus struck, brands were forecasted to invest over $68 Billion in sports, entertainment, cause, and event sponsorship properties in 2020. Since then, thousands of these events have been canceled or delayed – including the delay of the Tokyo Olympics – where brands had invested over $5Billion to reach a global audience – and the cancellation of March Madness.

6 HOW QUICKLY CAN WE DEVELOP AND SCALE DIGITAL SELLING CHANNELS? How and how quickly can your organization develop and enable digital and virtual selling channels has emerged as a critical issue in a market where these channels have become essential to transacting with work-at-home buyers and consumers. In general, we’re seeing businesses that embraced digital-first business models are doing much better than those that did not,” reports Joe Galvin, the Chief Research Officer of Vistage Worldwide. “Businesses that invested in building a strong digital infrastructure are benefiting from this dynamic because they have the ability to support DTC commerce and virtual selling models.” Chris Hummel views scaling back on digital channel investment as an existential risk. “Customers are moving online. They expect a great experience online. And increasingly want to buy online. Remote working in the wake of the coronavirus is only going to accelerate this shift. Before the crisis, some reports suggest that 12% of the sales of B2B products and services across industries were online. That number will only grow in the new normal. So, the impact of digital cuts on revenue will be dramatic and quick.” 

7 WHEN IS THE BOTTOM AND WHEN SHOULD I START REINVESTING? The big questions are when is the bottom and when should we begin to reinvest?” according to Joe Galvin. “Business leaders will stay focused on crisis management until we find the bottom of this one and can assess the damage and determine how long they can survive at this velocity. CEOs are asking when will we have a line of sight on when the pandemic is under control so we can shift from crisis to recovery and reactivate face-to-face events, sponsorships, and selling channels as part of the go-to-market mix.” Professor Reibstein reinforces the importance of getting this timing right. “ It’s a very difficult balance for a business leader. Do we wait until the bottom, or do we start reinvesting before we get there? Do we have to wait until full recovery, or will that be too late? Will the cost to regain lost ground be higher than it would have been if we had invested earlier? Mo Katibeh at AT&T shares the same perspective. “Tactically, we’re starting to ask when we will hit peak usage because there are only so many remote users and so many minutes of use in a day. The good news is so far the networks are handling this traffic well. Beyond that, when the “COVID winter” will end, what steps they need to take in the recovery and what stasis (the new normal) will look like are all open but critical questions right now. In a strategic sense, these short-term changes in usage are not the only dynamic to look at. We anticipate the response to the virus will bring about fundamental and long-lasting changes to the mix and composition of traffic over corporate and consumer communications networks, and the infrastructure that underlies them.

To help CMOs lead in the crisis and keep an eye on the long-term while addressing the short-term, Professor David Reibstein of the Wharton Business School has been conducting research with senior leaders to get management insights on the short, medium and long-term impacts the coronavirus will have on sales and marketing strategies, resource allocation, budgets, investments, and plans. Marketing leaders can learn more about his findings and participate in the study at this link.

  Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

  Seven Questions Every Growth Leader Needs To Ask In The Wake Of The Covid Crisis As Director of the Revenue Enablement Institute and member of the Forbes CMO Practice, I teach growth leaders how to grow revenues, profits, and firm value and maximize the return on growth assets and investments.

[businessliveme]

Redefining Banking

Ahmed Al Musalmi, CEO, Sohar International, talks about its rebranding, new direction and the financial performance in 2018

Bank Sohar (as it was formerly known) has recently rebranded itself as Sohar International. What is the vision behind this rebranding?

Sohar International is among the youngest banks and it is the fastest growing bank in Oman with 10 per cent market share, serving over 250,000 customers and offering a wide range of corporate, investment, retail and Islamic banking services through an extensive network of physical and digital touchpoints across the Sultanate.

The vision behind the new brand is to become a leading Omani service company that helps customers, communities and people prosper and grow. This aspirational and inspirational vision is underpinned by five key pillars: purpose, promise, principles, personality and experience. The purpose encompasses the renewed organisational belief of helping people win by delivering banking for their ever changing world, which is supported by the promise for responsive banking services for people to reach any goal. Our behaviors will be based on simple principles: The principle of more velocity that everything we do will be made simple and fast; the principle of more value that everything will be made relevant and connected to our customers’ world; and the principle of more vision that everything is geared towards progress, liberating new thinking and demonstrated by our professional teams who embrace the personality of being sharp, human and unstoppable that will be felt through any interactions.

It is in this context that our business is transforming into an ecosystem of financial services offering differentiated value propositions with a variety of choices for our customers and unrivalled customer experience.

During the launch of the new identity you said, “Our business needed to transform to become more customer-centric, keep us and our customers ahead of the game and help people win in such an ever-changing world.” What can customers – both internal and external-expect from Sohar International as part of this new strategic direction?

Customer-centricity and excellence are embedded deeply into our new business model that is designed to provide a variety of best-in-class differentiated value propositions with excellence and experience that is second to none. We endevour to bring the best of the world to our customers and showcase the best of Oman to the rest of the world through strategic partnerships and alliances.

We design our digital products and services in line with the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple etc. The launch of our eFloos in collaboration with Omantel is one example of the best-in-class digital wallet whose adoption by customers has been overwhelming. The eFloos digital wallet delivers on our principle of more velocity, more value and more vision that provides speed, scale and simplicity to our customers’ increasingly busy lifestyles. We are investing heavily in innovation and entrepreneurship to provide our customers with the best in class value added products and services.

Please explain the idea and ethos of the new brand for our readers?

With confidence, flexibility and ambition, we adopted a sharp, human and unstoppable personality in how we do things internally and externally. We are more focused in our engagements and we understand as humans and also as customers how much it means to a person when they are empowered to achieve their goals. Believing that our customers deserve the best banking experience, we find solutions for them to achieve their goals and push bounderies wherever possible. We do not seek to disrupt – we seek to create a new normal.

With this ideology, our brand logo sets to capture the stature and elegance of a financial institution while still feeling dynamic and perpetual. We are dynamic; the two semi circles depict the essence of time – the mechanics within a clock’s movement. The orange spike denotes Sohar International being right there in the right place at the right time – that element of precision – at the centre of things that are important to customers.

Sohar International has dropped the word ‘bank.’ Is this an indication that you are looking at areas beyond the realm of banking and financial services?

In the words of Bill Gates, “banking is necessary, banks are not!” This explains the severity of the altering world, where we are required to go beyond the norm of banking to remain relevant. Sohar International is more than a physical entity; we are more fluid through enriched and personalised experiences. Offering fast, more relevant and liberating comprehensive services is what enables us to become an ecosystem for more than just providing financial services to our customers. Our vision is to forge ahead as a ‘world-leading Omani service company’, and as I mentioned earlier, this will challenge us to benchmark each aspect of our performance against leading service providers in multiple industries while we will move forward ensuring consistency raising the bar for banking in Oman.

Sohar International does not have an overseas physical presence currently. Given this, what is the relevance and justification for using ‘International’ as a part of your new identity?

As I explained earlier, we endevour to bring the best of the world to Oman and showcase the best of Oman to the rest of the world through strategic partnerships and alliances. We design our digital products and services in line with the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple etc. Our rebrand carries forward a promise, the assurance of providing responsive banking services per international standards. We further want to be where our customers go, assisting them every step of the way.

How was Sohar International’s financial performance in 2018 and what are your thoughts on 2019?

We closed 2018 on a strong and remarkable note; I personally believe that 2018 was a noteworthy milestone on our journey towards becoming a leading service company, with sustained growth throughout the year. We worked extensively on reinforcing our commitment towards an enhanced performance on the fundamentals in response to the on-going challenging operating environment.

We are extremely pleased with our performance in 2018, ending the year with a net profit of RO29.36mn, comparing to RO25.33mn in 2017, marking an increase of 15.9 per cent. The bank’s board of directors recommended a cash dividend of 6 per cent for the year, corresponding to 6 baisas per share. We closed 2018 with a promise to generate more velocity, vision, and value for our stakeholders.

The dawn of 2019 along with our rebrand retains our focus on customer centricity with the launch of our new, modern and dynamic identity under the name Sohar International. Sohar International embodies a new purpose to help customers, community and people to grow, prosper and win by providing them responsive banking solutions in an ever-changing world. This is our first step towards a foray into redefining banking beyond just financial services which falls directly in-line with our customer-centric mentality. We will continue to craft new avenues of growth that not only further our customer’s success but also catapult the development of the industry and the Sultanate as well.

The post Redefining Banking appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

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[realselfblog]

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp

To succeed in the business of health information technology (HIT), a company has to be very clear on the problems it’s trying to address. Now that EHRs are well-adopted in physicians’ practices and hospitals, patient data have gone digital, and can be aggregated and mined for better diagnosis, treatment, and intelligent decision making. There’s surely lots of data to mine. And there are also lots of opportunities to design tools that aren’t very useful for the core problems we need to solve, for the clinicians on the front-lines trying to solve them, and for the patients and people  whom we ultimately serve.

At the end of each day, the HIT company has to remember that at the end of a digital transaction, there’s a person. That individual could be a member of a health plan, a nurse, a physician, a grandparent-caregiver tapping into her grandchild’s medical portal…all people, with different abilities to read and comprehend data, values, and incentives.

Earlier this week, I spent a day with Medecision’s digital health team, aka ‘the Liberators.’ My role in the event was to provide a through-line from introductions to trend-weaving what I heard and learned at the end of the day. In the middle of the day, I spoke about trends in health care focusing on the patient: as a payor, as im-patient, as digital, as a consumer, and as political.

As a payor, the insured patient in 2019 is likely to be managing a high-deductible health plan, responsible for first-dollar costs until s/he reaches that threshold. As such, health care spending feels like a retail event, prompting the patient-as-payor to ask, “what’s the price?” “What’s the value?” “What’s the product?” “What are the alternatives?” Even though price transparency has gone live online among more hospitals, this start-up phase is still heavy-lifting and confounding for people to understand. Health care costs continue to be the top pocketbook issue for most families in the U.S. across income cohorts.

As that payor, expecting retail service, patients are im-patient. Why can’t appointments be made online like I do with restaurants on OpenTable? What’s so hard about getting me my lab test on the day or next-day after I provide my sample? Health care surely doesn’t feel like the best retail experience, and that’s especially true for health plans. I shared the Temkin Group’s data on customer experience (shown here), where our favorites are found in grocery stores, fast food joints, and retailers. Health insurance plans? Not so much.

Patients are also digital: smartphones are fairly ubiquitous (although we must remember that not all people can afford data plans – my mantra, that connectivity and broadband are a social determinant of health). This means people (with connectivity) want work-flows for health care the way they conduct their financial affairs, social networking, travel planning, and way-finding. People are omni-channel, too, so health care must think like a retailer in reaching people wherever and however they want to be reached: online, via email, via text, phone call, and even via snail mail for some (albeit increasingly fewer) patients.

Patients are consumers, at the end of the day. As payors, digital beings, im-patient people demanding service levels they experience elsewhere — outside of healthcare.

Finally, patients are political. Health care was the top issue driving voters to the 2018 mid-term elections. Health care will also be top-of-mind among voters in 2020, who are becoming more aware of the risks of losing coverage. This week, the level of uninsured people in America rose to a four-year high, with the erosion of support for the Affordable Care Act by President Trump and Congress over the past two years. Growing concern for losing coverage for pre-existing conditions has become mainstream across political parties.

Politics underpin what’s happening in health plans in the public sector, and I spoke a bit about Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is the place to look, across the fifty State Governors, for Medicaid expansion (or not); growing integration of behavioral health to deal with depression, anxiety, and the opioid crisis; and greater attention to the social determinants of health and long term social supports (LTSS). You can see the latest Medicaid demonstration waiver data from a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis done January 9, 2019 shown in the bar chart.

To that point, during the day, two Medecision Liberators played out a scenario for complex cardio management. In the role play, a patient-persona was speaking with a call center associate. In the conversation, the plan member asked how the associate knew so much about them. Further into the conversation, the member said she needed to hurry off the call to get to her bingo game in time.

That conversation raised two important points and opportunities to drive health outcomes: first, on the issue of privacy and trust, as the member questioned just how the associate knew so much about her. That’s an opportunity to forge a bond of trust between the member and the health plan or provider, to discuss how bringing various data together can help paint a picture of her whole life and help her achieve better health.

The second item — the bingo game — presented an opportunity to discuss social supports, transportation to the event, and what the member might be snacking on during bingo. If it turns out she loves the salty snacks or M&Ms, the health coach has an opportunity to counsel the member on the impact of salt on her heart health, and suggestions for some healthier snacking.

This kind of conversation is inherent in the values that Health New England’s Lisa Holland discussed in the context of HNE’s customer promises for the organization: quality, thoughtfulness, and humanity.

The Medecision Liberators collaborated in a brainstorming exercise about social determinants of health, generating important insightful questions they would ask people about their lives to un-earth opportunities to address social supports. A few of these questions were:

What’s your most challenging daily activity?

Walk me through your typical day.

Do you have someone you can rely on if you need help?

What does living independently look like to you?

Do you have access to healthy food?

What did you do for entertainment today that gave you pleasure?

Can you read?

That led me to end the day’s trend-weaving quoting one of my favorite JAMA columns from the recent past: that Value-based payments require valuing what matters to patients, co-written by Dr. Joann Lynn, Dr. Aaron McKethan, and Dr. Ashish Jha. This has become a pillar in my thinking about the role of respect and trust in health care between patients (as payors, consumers, self-carers and caregivers) and health care organizations. They ask and answer: “How can a care system be structured to deeply respect the myriad differences among patients when disabilities or advanced age makes those differences especially important? The answer is that the delivery system must proactively help affected people articulate their priorities and goals.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The theme of trust was mentioned throughout the day, across a wide range of discussion topics. I noted in closing that this week also convened the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which Edelman annually updates their Trust Barometer. This year’s survey found that globally in 2019, the most trusted institution for consumers is the employer: both for ensuring a job for “me,” as well as for being a good corporate citizen in the community locally and in the larger world, in sustainability and responsibility.

This behavior drives trust, which we learned is the most important driver behind peoples’ engagement in health — a key finding in the first Edelman Health Engagement Barometer conducted in 2008. Eleven years later, trust as a health engagement requirement is even more important in light of our AI-enabled health care world.

We remember that at the end of every health IT transaction, there’s a person: a plan member, a consumer, a doctor, a caregiver.

“We are all the same,” a doctor’s essay in JAMA noted this week. Dr. Mandy Maneval, a family practitioner in Mifflintown, PA, wrote:

It strikes me that so many of life’s moments are dichotomies of health and disease, life and death, joy and sorrow. As a family medicine physician, this mirrors my everyday life. I often leave one patient’s room after giving bad news and immediately enter the next room to see the happy parents of a newborn. Navigating the full spectrum of human emotion is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. There are days when I feel like a hero and others when I cannot do a thing right…Connecting deeply through our shared humanity, no matter our differences, is one of the most precious gifts we offer and receive as physicians. We are all the same.

That works for physicians, and it works for all of us in the health care ecosystem. I thank Medecision for the opportunity to participate in this day of insights, team-building, and real human connection.

That last sentence was going to be the conclusion of this post. But just in time, on cue as this post was being scheduled on WordPress, an article titled A Framework for Increasing Trust Between Patients and the Organizations That Care for Them arrived in my inbox from JAMA published on 24th January 2019. Dr. Thomas Lee and colleagues explained:

Trust matters in health care. It makes patients feel less vulnerable, clinicians feel more effective, and reduces the imbalances of information by improving the flow of information. Trust is so fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that it is easy to assume it exists. But because of changes in health care and society at large, trust is increasingly understood to be at risk and in need of attention.

The authors outline potential approaches to increase trust between patients and health care organizations, which include:

As a first step, leadership should acknowledge that trust is foundational and a trusting environment essential for good health care

Measuring trust should be a standard part of evaluating patient care experiences, including those with health plans

Transparency of patient care experiences should be part of measuring, monitoring and continually improving quality and safety

Boards and leadership should routinely examine data that reflect on patient and staff trust, and include these in reward plans

Standards, training and accountability systems should be developed for clinicians and for teams

Relationships between patients and clinicians should be structured such that patients can make choices reflecting their personal preferences: this recognizes that patients know more about what matters to them and how they are doing

Health systems should insure needs of patients for a navigator or translator are met

Finally, patients should be actively engaged in designing solutions to the erosion of trust.

This article is free from JAMA’s usual paywall, so please click on the link above to access the entire discussion. These doctors who crowdsourced the recommendations really understand that it’s good to know about patient’s love of bingo, taste for salty snacks, and social support systems…and patients really do want to be part of their own planning and care.

The post The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp posted first on http://dentistfortworth.blogspot.com

[maxihealth]

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp

To succeed in the business of health information technology (HIT), a company has to be very clear on the problems it’s trying to address. Now that EHRs are well-adopted in physicians’ practices and hospitals, patient data have gone digital, and can be aggregated and mined for better diagnosis, treatment, and intelligent decision making. There’s surely lots of data to mine. And there are also lots of opportunities to design tools that aren’t very useful for the core problems we need to solve, for the clinicians on the front-lines trying to solve them, and for the patients and people  whom we ultimately serve.

At the end of each day, the HIT company has to remember that at the end of a digital transaction, there’s a person. That individual could be a member of a health plan, a nurse, a physician, a grandparent-caregiver tapping into her grandchild’s medical portal…all people, with different abilities to read and comprehend data, values, and incentives.

Earlier this week, I spent a day with Medecision’s digital health team, aka ‘the Liberators.’ My role in the event was to provide a through-line from introductions to trend-weaving what I heard and learned at the end of the day. In the middle of the day, I spoke about trends in health care focusing on the patient: as a payor, as im-patient, as digital, as a consumer, and as political.

As a payor, the insured patient in 2019 is likely to be managing a high-deductible health plan, responsible for first-dollar costs until s/he reaches that threshold. As such, health care spending feels like a retail event, prompting the patient-as-payor to ask, “what’s the price?” “What’s the value?” “What’s the product?” “What are the alternatives?” Even though price transparency has gone live online among more hospitals, this start-up phase is still heavy-lifting and confounding for people to understand. Health care costs continue to be the top pocketbook issue for most families in the U.S. across income cohorts.

As that payor, expecting retail service, patients are im-patient. Why can’t appointments be made online like I do with restaurants on OpenTable? What’s so hard about getting me my lab test on the day or next-day after I provide my sample? Health care surely doesn’t feel like the best retail experience, and that’s especially true for health plans. I shared the Temkin Group’s data on customer experience (shown here), where our favorites are found in grocery stores, fast food joints, and retailers. Health insurance plans? Not so much.

Patients are also digital: smartphones are fairly ubiquitous (although we must remember that not all people can afford data plans – my mantra, that connectivity and broadband are a social determinant of health). This means people (with connectivity) want work-flows for health care the way they conduct their financial affairs, social networking, travel planning, and way-finding. People are omni-channel, too, so health care must think like a retailer in reaching people wherever and however they want to be reached: online, via email, via text, phone call, and even via snail mail for some (albeit increasingly fewer) patients.

Patients are consumers, at the end of the day. As payors, digital beings, im-patient people demanding service levels they experience elsewhere — outside of healthcare.

Finally, patients are political. Health care was the top issue driving voters to the 2018 mid-term elections. Health care will also be top-of-mind among voters in 2020, who are becoming more aware of the risks of losing coverage. This week, the level of uninsured people in America rose to a four-year high, with the erosion of support for the Affordable Care Act by President Trump and Congress over the past two years. Growing concern for losing coverage for pre-existing conditions has become mainstream across political parties.

Politics underpin what’s happening in health plans in the public sector, and I spoke a bit about Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is the place to look, across the fifty State Governors, for Medicaid expansion (or not); growing integration of behavioral health to deal with depression, anxiety, and the opioid crisis; and greater attention to the social determinants of health and long term social supports (LTSS). You can see the latest Medicaid demonstration waiver data from a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis done January 9, 2019 shown in the bar chart.

To that point, during the day, two Medecision Liberators played out a scenario for complex cardio management. In the role play, a patient-persona was speaking with a call center associate. In the conversation, the plan member asked how the associate knew so much about them. Further into the conversation, the member said she needed to hurry off the call to get to her bingo game in time.

That conversation raised two important points and opportunities to drive health outcomes: first, on the issue of privacy and trust, as the member questioned just how the associate knew so much about her. That’s an opportunity to forge a bond of trust between the member and the health plan or provider, to discuss how bringing various data together can help paint a picture of her whole life and help her achieve better health.

The second item — the bingo game — presented an opportunity to discuss social supports, transportation to the event, and what the member might be snacking on during bingo. If it turns out she loves the salty snacks or M&Ms, the health coach has an opportunity to counsel the member on the impact of salt on her heart health, and suggestions for some healthier snacking.

This kind of conversation is inherent in the values that Health New England’s Lisa Holland discussed in the context of HNE’s customer promises for the organization: quality, thoughtfulness, and humanity.

The Medecision Liberators collaborated in a brainstorming exercise about social determinants of health, generating important insightful questions they would ask people about their lives to un-earth opportunities to address social supports. A few of these questions were:

What’s your most challenging daily activity?

Walk me through your typical day.

Do you have someone you can rely on if you need help?

What does living independently look like to you?

Do you have access to healthy food?

What did you do for entertainment today that gave you pleasure?

Can you read?

That led me to end the day’s trend-weaving quoting one of my favorite JAMA columns from the recent past: that Value-based payments require valuing what matters to patients, co-written by Dr. Joann Lynn, Dr. Aaron McKethan, and Dr. Ashish Jha. This has become a pillar in my thinking about the role of respect and trust in health care between patients (as payors, consumers, self-carers and caregivers) and health care organizations. They ask and answer: “How can a care system be structured to deeply respect the myriad differences among patients when disabilities or advanced age makes those differences especially important? The answer is that the delivery system must proactively help affected people articulate their priorities and goals.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The theme of trust was mentioned throughout the day, across a wide range of discussion topics. I noted in closing that this week also convened the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which Edelman annually updates their Trust Barometer. This year’s survey found that globally in 2019, the most trusted institution for consumers is the employer: both for ensuring a job for “me,” as well as for being a good corporate citizen in the community locally and in the larger world, in sustainability and responsibility.

This behavior drives trust, which we learned is the most important driver behind peoples’ engagement in health — a key finding in the first Edelman Health Engagement Barometer conducted in 2008. Eleven years later, trust as a health engagement requirement is even more important in light of our AI-enabled health care world.

We remember that at the end of every health IT transaction, there’s a person: a plan member, a consumer, a doctor, a caregiver.

“We are all the same,” a doctor’s essay in JAMA noted this week. Dr. Mandy Maneval, a family practitioner in Mifflintown, PA, wrote:

It strikes me that so many of life’s moments are dichotomies of health and disease, life and death, joy and sorrow. As a family medicine physician, this mirrors my everyday life. I often leave one patient’s room after giving bad news and immediately enter the next room to see the happy parents of a newborn. Navigating the full spectrum of human emotion is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. There are days when I feel like a hero and others when I cannot do a thing right…Connecting deeply through our shared humanity, no matter our differences, is one of the most precious gifts we offer and receive as physicians. We are all the same.

That works for physicians, and it works for all of us in the health care ecosystem. I thank Medecision for the opportunity to participate in this day of insights, team-building, and real human connection.

That last sentence was going to be the conclusion of this post. But just in time, on cue as this post was being scheduled on WordPress, an article titled A Framework for Increasing Trust Between Patients and the Organizations That Care for Them arrived in my inbox from JAMA published on 24th January 2019. Dr. Thomas Lee and colleagues explained:

Trust matters in health care. It makes patients feel less vulnerable, clinicians feel more effective, and reduces the imbalances of information by improving the flow of information. Trust is so fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that it is easy to assume it exists. But because of changes in health care and society at large, trust is increasingly understood to be at risk and in need of attention.

The authors outline potential approaches to increase trust between patients and health care organizations, which include:

As a first step, leadership should acknowledge that trust is foundational and a trusting environment essential for good health care

Measuring trust should be a standard part of evaluating patient care experiences, including those with health plans

Transparency of patient care experiences should be part of measuring, monitoring and continually improving quality and safety

Boards and leadership should routinely examine data that reflect on patient and staff trust, and include these in reward plans

Standards, training and accountability systems should be developed for clinicians and for teams

Relationships between patients and clinicians should be structured such that patients can make choices reflecting their personal preferences: this recognizes that patients know more about what matters to them and how they are doing

Health systems should insure needs of patients for a navigator or translator are met

Finally, patients should be actively engaged in designing solutions to the erosion of trust.

This article is free from JAMA’s usual paywall, so please click on the link above to access the entire discussion. These doctors who crowdsourced the recommendations really understand that it’s good to know about patient’s love of bingo, taste for salty snacks, and social support systems…and patients really do want to be part of their own planning and care.

The post The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp posted first on https://carilloncitydental.blogspot.com

[titheguerrero]

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp

To succeed in the business of health information technology (HIT), a company has to be very clear on the problems it’s trying to address. Now that EHRs are well-adopted in physicians’ practices and hospitals, patient data have gone digital, and can be aggregated and mined for better diagnosis, treatment, and intelligent decision making. There’s surely lots of data to mine. And there are also lots of opportunities to design tools that aren’t very useful for the core problems we need to solve, for the clinicians on the front-lines trying to solve them, and for the patients and people  whom we ultimately serve.

At the end of each day, the HIT company has to remember that at the end of a digital transaction, there’s a person. That individual could be a member of a health plan, a nurse, a physician, a grandparent-caregiver tapping into her grandchild’s medical portal…all people, with different abilities to read and comprehend data, values, and incentives.

Earlier this week, I spent a day with Medecision’s digital health team, aka ‘the Liberators.’ My role in the event was to provide a through-line from introductions to trend-weaving what I heard and learned at the end of the day. In the middle of the day, I spoke about trends in health care focusing on the patient: as a payor, as im-patient, as digital, as a consumer, and as political.

As a payor, the insured patient in 2019 is likely to be managing a high-deductible health plan, responsible for first-dollar costs until s/he reaches that threshold. As such, health care spending feels like a retail event, prompting the patient-as-payor to ask, “what’s the price?” “What’s the value?” “What’s the product?” “What are the alternatives?” Even though price transparency has gone live online among more hospitals, this start-up phase is still heavy-lifting and confounding for people to understand. Health care costs continue to be the top pocketbook issue for most families in the U.S. across income cohorts.

As that payor, expecting retail service, patients are im-patient. Why can’t appointments be made online like I do with restaurants on OpenTable? What’s so hard about getting me my lab test on the day or next-day after I provide my sample? Health care surely doesn’t feel like the best retail experience, and that’s especially true for health plans. I shared the Temkin Group’s data on customer experience (shown here), where our favorites are found in grocery stores, fast food joints, and retailers. Health insurance plans? Not so much.

Patients are also digital: smartphones are fairly ubiquitous (although we must remember that not all people can afford data plans – my mantra, that connectivity and broadband are a social determinant of health). This means people (with connectivity) want work-flows for health care the way they conduct their financial affairs, social networking, travel planning, and way-finding. People are omni-channel, too, so health care must think like a retailer in reaching people wherever and however they want to be reached: online, via email, via text, phone call, and even via snail mail for some (albeit increasingly fewer) patients.

Patients are consumers, at the end of the day. As payors, digital beings, im-patient people demanding service levels they experience elsewhere — outside of healthcare.

Finally, patients are political. Health care was the top issue driving voters to the 2018 mid-term elections. Health care will also be top-of-mind among voters in 2020, who are becoming more aware of the risks of losing coverage. This week, the level of uninsured people in America rose to a four-year high, with the erosion of support for the Affordable Care Act by President Trump and Congress over the past two years. Growing concern for losing coverage for pre-existing conditions has become mainstream across political parties.

Politics underpin what’s happening in health plans in the public sector, and I spoke a bit about Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is the place to look, across the fifty State Governors, for Medicaid expansion (or not); growing integration of behavioral health to deal with depression, anxiety, and the opioid crisis; and greater attention to the social determinants of health and long term social supports (LTSS). You can see the latest Medicaid demonstration waiver data from a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis done January 9, 2019 shown in the bar chart.

To that point, during the day, two Medecision Liberators played out a scenario for complex cardio management. In the role play, a patient-persona was speaking with a call center associate. In the conversation, the plan member asked how the associate knew so much about them. Further into the conversation, the member said she needed to hurry off the call to get to her bingo game in time.

That conversation raised two important points and opportunities to drive health outcomes: first, on the issue of privacy and trust, as the member questioned just how the associate knew so much about her. That’s an opportunity to forge a bond of trust between the member and the health plan or provider, to discuss how bringing various data together can help paint a picture of her whole life and help her achieve better health.

The second item — the bingo game — presented an opportunity to discuss social supports, transportation to the event, and what the member might be snacking on during bingo. If it turns out she loves the salty snacks or M&Ms, the health coach has an opportunity to counsel the member on the impact of salt on her heart health, and suggestions for some healthier snacking.

This kind of conversation is inherent in the values that Health New England’s Lisa Holland discussed in the context of HNE’s customer promises for the organization: quality, thoughtfulness, and humanity.

The Medecision Liberators collaborated in a brainstorming exercise about social determinants of health, generating important insightful questions they would ask people about their lives to un-earth opportunities to address social supports. A few of these questions were:

What’s your most challenging daily activity?

Walk me through your typical day.

Do you have someone you can rely on if you need help?

What does living independently look like to you?

Do you have access to healthy food?

What did you do for entertainment today that gave you pleasure?

Can you read?

That led me to end the day’s trend-weaving quoting one of my favorite JAMA columns from the recent past: that Value-based payments require valuing what matters to patients, co-written by Dr. Joann Lynn, Dr. Aaron McKethan, and Dr. Ashish Jha. This has become a pillar in my thinking about the role of respect and trust in health care between patients (as payors, consumers, self-carers and caregivers) and health care organizations. They ask and answer: “How can a care system be structured to deeply respect the myriad differences among patients when disabilities or advanced age makes those differences especially important? The answer is that the delivery system must proactively help affected people articulate their priorities and goals.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The theme of trust was mentioned throughout the day, across a wide range of discussion topics. I noted in closing that this week also convened the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which Edelman annually updates their Trust Barometer. This year’s survey found that globally in 2019, the most trusted institution for consumers is the employer: both for ensuring a job for “me,” as well as for being a good corporate citizen in the community locally and in the larger world, in sustainability and responsibility.

This behavior drives trust, which we learned is the most important driver behind peoples’ engagement in health — a key finding in the first Edelman Health Engagement Barometer conducted in 2008. Eleven years later, trust as a health engagement requirement is even more important in light of our AI-enabled health care world.

We remember that at the end of every health IT transaction, there’s a person: a plan member, a consumer, a doctor, a caregiver.

“We are all the same,” a doctor’s essay in JAMA noted this week. Dr. Mandy Maneval, a family practitioner in Mifflintown, PA, wrote:

It strikes me that so many of life’s moments are dichotomies of health and disease, life and death, joy and sorrow. As a family medicine physician, this mirrors my everyday life. I often leave one patient’s room after giving bad news and immediately enter the next room to see the happy parents of a newborn. Navigating the full spectrum of human emotion is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. There are days when I feel like a hero and others when I cannot do a thing right…Connecting deeply through our shared humanity, no matter our differences, is one of the most precious gifts we offer and receive as physicians. We are all the same.

That works for physicians, and it works for all of us in the health care ecosystem. I thank Medecision for the opportunity to participate in this day of insights, team-building, and real human connection.

That last sentence was going to be the conclusion of this post. But just in time, on cue as this post was being scheduled on WordPress, an article titled A Framework for Increasing Trust Between Patients and the Organizations That Care for Them arrived in my inbox from JAMA published on 24th January 2019. Dr. Thomas Lee and colleagues explained:

Trust matters in health care. It makes patients feel less vulnerable, clinicians feel more effective, and reduces the imbalances of information by improving the flow of information. Trust is so fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that it is easy to assume it exists. But because of changes in health care and society at large, trust is increasingly understood to be at risk and in need of attention.

The authors outline potential approaches to increase trust between patients and health care organizations, which include:

As a first step, leadership should acknowledge that trust is foundational and a trusting environment essential for good health care

Measuring trust should be a standard part of evaluating patient care experiences, including those with health plans

Transparency of patient care experiences should be part of measuring, monitoring and continually improving quality and safety

Boards and leadership should routinely examine data that reflect on patient and staff trust, and include these in reward plans

Standards, training and accountability systems should be developed for clinicians and for teams

Relationships between patients and clinicians should be structured such that patients can make choices reflecting their personal preferences: this recognizes that patients know more about what matters to them and how they are doing

Health systems should insure needs of patients for a navigator or translator are met

Finally, patients should be actively engaged in designing solutions to the erosion of trust.

This article is free from JAMA’s usual paywall, so please click on the link above to access the entire discussion. These doctors who crowdsourced the recommendations really understand that it’s good to know about patient’s love of bingo, taste for salty snacks, and social support systems…and patients really do want to be part of their own planning and care.

The post The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Article source:Health Populi

[cmst138]

Don’t underestimate Americans’ knowledge of Facebook’s business model

As part of its ongoing study of attitudes about Facebook, Pew Research today released some new data on how well people understand the fundamentals of ad targeting. In The Verge, Julia Alexander has the key findings:

Seventy-four percent of Facebook users are unaware that Facebook records a list of their interests for ad-targeting purposes, according to a new study from the Pew Institute.

Participants in the study were first pointed to Facebook’s ad preferences page, which lists out a person’s interests. Nearly 60 percent of participants admitted that Facebook’s lists of interests were very or somewhat accurate to their actual interests, and 51 percent said they were uncomfortable with Facebook creating the list.

Coverage of the data generally emphasized consumers’ ignorance. “Most Facebook users still in the dark about its creepy ad practices,” reported TechCrunch. “Facebook advertising profiles are a mystery to most users,” said the New York Times. “Most users still don’t know how Facebook advertising works,” said Wired.

All of these stories are accurate — but I tend to view this data more optimistically. A high school career spent staying up late and catching “Jaywalking” segments on The Tonight Show (don’t @ me) instilled a healthy skepticism that a large group of Americans could ever be assumed to know anything. As recently as 2017, a majority of Americans could not name a single right protected by the First Amendment. If these fellow countrymen of mine are still catching up to the vicissitudes of online ad platforms, I can forgive them.

But let’s take another look at the numbers. According to Pew, 26 percent of Americans are aware that Facebook records a list of their interests and uses it to target ads at them. There are roughly 214 million Americans with Facebook profiles. If that’s the case, then over the past decade, 55.6 million people have educated themselves about how ad targeting works. Facebook itself has played no small role in this effort, regularly describing their ad targeting system in software and marketing materials, and recently even started building pop-up events around it.

Then consider that Facebook usage in North America has been flat for three quarters. And toss in another set of Pew data, from September:

Pew surveyed more than 3,400 U.S. Facebook users in May and June, and found that a whopping 44 percent of those ages 18 to 29 say they’ve deleted the app from their phone in the last year. Some of them may have reinstalled it later.

Overall, 26 percent of survey respondents say they deleted the app, while 42 percent have “taken a break” for several weeks or more, and 54 percent have adjusted their privacy settings.

That survey did not attempt to attribute these deletions to any particular cause, though the authors speculate that a year of data privacy scandals has taken its toll. It seems possible, at least, that some of the tens of millions of Americans who do know how Facebook’s business model works are one reason that the company’s growth has slowed. (Totally saturating North America and running out of new customers is admittedly probably a bigger reason.)

It’s worth noting that a majority of survey respondents said Facebook had accurately pegged their interests, and only a bare majority of respondents said the list made them feel uncomfortable. “The data shows that 73% of people felt that categories accurately described what they like, and to us that’s a good thing because those people will have a better experience on Facebook,” Rob Goldman, who runs advertising at Facebook, said in a Twitter thread.

But the group of people who are both informed about how Facebook works and uncomfortable with it, while smaller than you might expect, is more than large enough to make a difference in Facebook’s future. Those 55.6 million Americans already represent a healthy constituency — one that, judging from declining Facebook usage, already appears to be voting.

Democracy

Exclusive: Facebook brings stricter ads rules to India ahead of general election

Facebook plans to extend its updated political advertising rules — which require advertisers to register via mail before posting political ads — are coming to India, Nigeria, Ukraine and the European Union in the next few months, Paresh Dave reports:

Beginning on Wednesday in Nigeria, only advertisers located in the country will be able to run electoral ads, mirroring a policy unveiled during an Irish referendum last May, Katie Harbath, Facebook’s director of global politics and outreach, said in an interview.

The same policy will take effect in Ukraine in February. Nigeria holds a presidential election on Feb. 16, while Ukraine will follow on March 31.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is going to teach Democrats how to be more popular on Twitter

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is good at Twitter, will be teaching a social media workshop to Democrats on Thursday, Makena Kelly reports. Unfortunately, you have to be a Democratic member of Congress to attend.

Ocasio-Cortez will be leading a session with the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Thursday “on the most effective ways to engage constituents on Twitter and the importance of digital storytelling.” Her colleague, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) will be sharing his insights as well.

Ocasio-Cortez has over 2 million followers on Twitter, and 1.8 million on Instagram. Himes, who runs his own social media as well, has 76,000 followers on Twitter.

Congressman David Cicilline Is Out to Change Tech and Antitrust

Joe Nocera talks to David Cicilline, the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee. I predict his campaign committee will see a surge in donations this year!

CICILLINE: I was the co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, which develops the agenda for the Democrats, and it became clear to me that one of the central issues was the economic concentration of power and the corresponding concentration of political power that resulted in fewer choices, higher prices, and so on. And the more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that this economic challenge, where people are working harder and harder and not getting ahead, and this enormous concentration of wealth at the very top, this wasn’t just by accident. Part of the reason it wasn’t confronted successfully was because there hadn’t been a lot of serious attention to antitrust and competition policy — both in Democratic and Republican administrations. And so it made me realize that if we’re going to be serious about taking on income inequality and getting this country working for working people again we had to take this competition issue on directly.

Pressure mounts on Google, Microsoft, and Amazon’s facial recognition tech

Advocacy groups sent a joint letter to pressure tech giants not to sell facial recognition technology to the government, Makena Kelly reports.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) were among the groups that pressed these companies. The letter marks mounting pressure on some of Silicon Valley’s most influential companies and their ramping efforts to build facial recognition systems.

“We are at a crossroads with face surveillance, and the choices made by these companies now will determine whether the next generation will have to fear being tracked by the government for attending a protest, going to their place of worship, or simply living their lives,” Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties director for the ACLU of California, said.

Hackers selling access to tamper with U.S. news sites

One way you could pump a lot of fake news into the world is by taking over news publishers’ content management systems. Joe Uchill reports that hackers claim to be selling access to 1,425 U.S. sites:

The U.S. site package, listed in October, started bidding at $600 with a buy-it-now option of $1,200.

A second listing in December offered access to a centralized administration panel for a variety of news sites. Those sites were largely Southeast Asian, with Saudi and U.S. sites mixed in. Bidding on that started at $50, with an option to outright purchase at $150.

Elsewhere

Pinterest is interviewing bankers — a sign that the IPO is finally happening

Pinterest is preparing to go public soon, report Teddy Schleifer and Kurt Wagner:

Pinterest is expected to decide on its lead bankers soon, although some people close to the company believe that Goldman Sachs has had the edge. Selecting bankers in January would put Pinterest on pace for an IPO as early as the second quarter of this year, perhaps once the company has a full quarter of 2019 financials to share with Wall Street.

Sorry I Forgot Your Birthday, I Quit Facebook

For years, people outsourced the task of remembering birthdays to Facebook. As some people quit, how will they remember to message their friends? Joanna Stern explores:

Kaveri Chandrashekar, 30, a writer in Mumbai, estimates she used to receive 75 birthday wishes on Facebook. She deactivated her account in June 2017 because of privacy concerns. When her latest birthday rolled around, she received a fraction of the well-wishes, via texts and phone calls. Many arrived later at night because friends and family hadn’t remembered until later in the day.

Ms. Chandrashekar found herself in a real “Sixteen Candles” situation. (In the iconic ’80s film, the protagonist’s birthday is forgotten by everyone in her family.) At around 8 p.m., she hadn’t heard from her 86-year-old grandmother and decided to give her a call to make sure everything was OK. When she said it was her big three-oh, her grandmother replied: “Why didn’t Facebook remind me?”

Facebook is still a dog’s best friend

Animal shelters love Facebook, Kent German reports:

A September study by the ASPCA found that 76 percent of the shelters and rescue organizations surveyed say their social media use has increased in the last year, with Facebook being cited as the most effective platform for increasing adoptions. Sixty-six percent said social media had boosted fundraising levels and 56 percent said it’s helped them be more successful with placing senior animals or those with special needs.

World’s Most Valuable Startup Takes a Hit From China’s Slowdown

The company behind TikTok is struggling to hit its revenue targets amid a broader slowdown in the Chinese economy, report Lulu Yilun Chen and Selina Wang:

The company told investors to expect revenue of 50 billion ($7.4 billion) to 55 billion yuan during its most recent fundraising, the people said, asking not to be named because the matter is private. It reached the lower end of the target, the first time in years it hasn’t beaten its forecast, because it delayed monetizing new functions and China’s slowing economy dampened spending on ads, the people said.

Six-year-old Bytedance secured a $75 billion valuation in the most recent fundraising, vaulting it ahead of Uber Technologies Inc. in the global rankings, after attracting backing from SoftBank Group Corp., KKR & Co. and General Atlantic. The social media giant is nurturing a raft of apps including news aggregating service Toutiao and short video platform Tik Tok, helping it create an internet experience that’s a cross between Google news and Facebook.

Launches

Twitter brings the reverse-chronological feed to Android

If, like me, you generally prefer to read tweets sorted by recency, you can now do that on your Android device.

Takes

Facebook is a good place to find support when you’re grieving

Katie Hawkins-Gaar says that Facebook was indispensable after her husband died:

I get it. There’s a lot that’s bad about Facebook. But since my husband passed away, I’ve learned how beneficial social media can be when facing a major loss. Facebook gave me a way to share updates with friends and family when doing so in person was too difficult. And my Facebook friends offered me plenty in return: book suggestions, introductions to other widows and widowers, thoughtful messages and encouraging comments, and more “love” reactions than I could count.

Facebook was how, four days after Jamie’s death, friends knew to gather at an impromptu memorial at his favorite brewery in St. Petersburg, Florida, where we lived. It was how I communicated to hundreds of people the time and place of his funeral in Atlanta. It’s how, months later, I informed everyone that we had finally received the cause of death: fibromuscular dysplasia, a rare and often undiagnosed condition that causes narrowing and twisting of the arteries. In Jamie’s case, it affected his heart.

Facebook Doesn’t Need to Fool You

Max Read demolishes a Wired piece suggesting that the “10 Year Challenge” that grew popular on Facebook over the past week was a nefarious scheme to train machine learning systems. (Facebook already had this data for the most part. The whole challenge consisted of putting two previously uploaded Facebook pictures side by side. Obviously!)

Just as Facebook doesn’t need to eavesdrop on you, no one needs to fool you into posting photos of yourself. Indeed, as O’Neill herself acknowledges, there is already a particularly large data set of carefully curated photos of people from roughly ten years ago and now. It’s called “Facebook,” and I personally have been a longtime volunteer, donor, and subject. If you’re one of the 350 million people or so who’s been on Facebook since 2009 — or if you’ve uploaded older photos to the platform after joining — the world’s biggest social network already knows what you look like now, in the past, and probably in the future, too. O’Neill argues your already-extant Facebook photos aren’t as useful a data set for training facial-recognition algorithms as the 2009/2019 photos, but that seems obviously untrue: Facebook has spookily sophisticated face-recognition technology, as anyone who’s seen Facebook’s automatic tagging software at work will tell you.

And finally ...

Fake editions of The Washington Post handed out at multiple locations in D.C.

There’s fake news and then there’s fake news. Anti-Trump protesters known as the Yes Men handed out phony editions of the Washington Post in our nation’s capital on Wednesday. In addition to the print editions — which falsely stated that the president had resigned — the hoaxsters briefly put up a website that mimics the Post’s. In the afternoon, they put out a press release congratulating themselves for their daring:

“The story this paper tells is more reasonable than our current reality,” says author Onnesha Roychoudhuri, who created the paper together with author L.A. Kauffman and trickster activist collective the Yes Men. “And it’s anything but far-fetched. We’re already seeing unprecedented levels of protest and resistance. Now we just need to ask ourselves: What’s next? This paper offers a blueprint to help us reclaim our democracy.”

It’s a blueprint for something, anyway.

Talk to me

Send me tips, comments, questions, and a complete account of your concept of ad targeting: casey@theverge.com.

from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2RwwN3m

[nchyinotes]

Fintech: the future of financial institutions — with Clifford Chance

November 30 2018 

https://www.legalcheek.com/lc-careers-posts/event-fintech-the-future-of-financial-institutions-with-clifford-chance/

Below are the key themes around which the session will be structured:

Cryptocurrencies’ rocky journey towards the mainstream

ICOs: Where next?

The emerging fintech regulatory regime

Smart contracts and international law firms

The changing balance of power in the financial sector

Advice for aspiring fintech lawyers

Thoughts: When I attended this, I was over halfway through the online Fintech course I was taking and on the regulation section, so it was very well timed. Most of the background information about fintech I already knew from the course, but still found it interesting to hear what Peter and Andre chose to highlight. I thought they were very generous with the information they shared about both the business and legal issues, and the entire session was extremely well structured, so that made for easy (and good!) note taking haha.

Notes

Andre

TMT partner, 18 years

started career hoping to be a programmer, really interested in all things tech when younger (video games, programming on side), then reality struck

started law career when internet was about to take off

there’s always been change, but it’s the pace of change today that’s astounding, and it’s all driven by technology = challenges to firm + client

fast pace of change that allows a firm with all these resources to stay ahead of the curve + spot risks/opps before clients

what is fintech? means different things for different people

banks, insurance companies have over their whole lives relied heavily on tech

bank = stack of tech with product on top, reg all around, customers on side

signifies the rise of startups, challenges that historic institutions are now facing.

opp + sheer pace of change

operates in financial services space

significant (reg) barriers to entry: challengers

reg to comply with

capital requirements

broken down by accommodating regulator in UK that allows startups to try new things (sand box?)

what does the future hold?

exciting time, lots of opportunities, new ways to gain advantage with tech + repurpose what they already have

2 things equally interesting

rise of fintech startups, how they look at verticals, how they can be better/challenge institutions (new entrants,, new business models)

big institutional relationships = how it changes everything for them. new discussions, challenged fundamentally on what they provide + how they do that.

Peter

senior associate on reg team [more: https://www.legalcheek.com/lc-careers-posts/how-i-became-a-fintech-lawyer/]

how institutes are impacted

how reg provides framework for institutions to deal with tech challenge

there isn’t a specialist fintech lawyer, we are all fintech lawyers with specialisms (technology lawyer, regulatory lawyer, litigators, tax) = different angles

multi faceted aspect to any tech used by financial institutions (contractual arrangements for outsourcing, etc)

tackle from different directions

Perception that fintech means start up? more broad than that, it’s all pervading. it affects all verticals within financial services industry.

Data, P2P lending/crowdfunding, payments/FX, cryptocurrency, infrastructure, asset/wealth management, investment services, regtech, banking, e-conomy

what are the drivers from a financial institution perspective in engaging in this story?

keeping up, staying competitive

improvement to existing product/service - front end, drive new revenue (client coverage, experience, reduce costs)

more efficient operating model - balance sheet perspective, cost side  (simplify regulatory compliance, reduce operational and compliance cost, increase resources for profitable business)

breaking new ground

new product/service (crowdfunding/P2P

main tech trends driving changes: 4 deployed in different ways + overlapping

1) p2p transactions: marketplace lending, crowdfunding = disintermediation of financial institutions in middle of transaction

one of the most mature

2) big data / AI: will become a great driver, determine who survives in this market - who can leverage + profit from the vast amounts of data in their books

3) mobile payments + cashless world:

cash transactions in UK actually went up this year, anomaly

usually decline year on year

internet banking - electrically using web browser

evolution of how it’s provided - not in person/branch, internet browser/computer, mobile phone

developed + distributed in that way

purely mobile only banks - continuing trend

4) blockchain + DLT

way of storing data in a decentralised way - lots of different people all hold the same/copy of database

lots of work in this space - institutions find that this tech can facilitate some financial services they are providing

main effects: don’t need a central body to tell you who owns a security/how much money, everybody on that network can see who owns what

so when you want to make those transactions, don’t need to instruct a body, can do it directly/P2P and everyone on that system will trust it is a genuine transaction

underpinning many different projects - settling securities transactions, payments, trading loans

ICO’s = tokenised crowd funding

lending P2P, buying securities P2P, tokenises this process

one big problem with crowdfunding is liquidity - you can enter in loan, fund company, but then you’re stuck with it and it’s difficult to transfer + get someone to buy it

ICO turns it into some kind of token = easier to transfer, sell

solved problem in p2p, marketplace lending

Questions

How do you regulate automated decision making?

Do you have a right to monetise the data you’re collecting?

is that your data or the bank’s?

If you partner with a start-up, who owns the new IP?

joint venture produces new things - startup, joint venture, bank - how to structure that

Will ML trigger material outsourcing requirements?

How many regulators will oversee a single Blockchain product?

How will this affect banks?

currently at bank, core service: deposit taking service (accept your money, use it to make loans/invest it)

specialist profitable services: allow you to make payments/securities, issue cards, FX, lending, research, look at assets

plug into the infrastructure/payments systems (central security depositories, central banks) - so expensive to have to maintain this

chipping into specific parts (unbundling) - don’t care about bank of england access, banks you can do that its the expensive part —> disintermediation

why banks will continue to provide those profitable services:

1) Capital

raise VC funding, rounds of funding to get it off the ground

banks are sitting on money, can deploy cash to do those services

2) Compliance

difficult hurdle - barrier to entry

regulators can see that potentially if that’s unaddressed —> stranglehold

EU: PSD2: allows fintech startups to get bank accounts, access to payment systems, TPPs - third party payment service providers (make no payments themselves, never touch your money, but are a set of payment things licensed to provide services across europe. have to let these guys into bank systems’ data, and initiate payments on your behalf, if bank consents - account infrastructure, deposit taking, data dragging out. can’t put in contract)

value competition

monopoly on initiating payments

UK: Bank of England (Blueprint for Access), HMT (Open banking standard), FCA (FS on regulatory barriers to innovation in digital/mobile solutions, regulatory sandbox)

this data doesn’t belong to banks, belongs to consumers

what a bank has to do to get regulated - report to regulators, liquid, hold on to certain capital, license

becoming a bank isn’t something you can do overnight. you can produce subsets of services, but deposit taking + consumer lending + payment services + trading + asset management = need to get properly regulated

what about big techs?

could go down that route of compliance, putting in place necessary regulatory framework

amazon = SME loans, moving into that space around the edges

3) Customers

startups start with 0, have to build over time

customer data (tailored knowledge?), loads of customers already  

Andre

Work together in a seamless way

Meeting the challenge of a startup

do it themselves

acquire or invest in fintech

collaborate with - joint venture, white label, outsource

require different lawyers with different specialisms to come together

big challenges to big institutions

organic growth

speed to market: layers of approval to get something done, and thats two years later

fostering innovation culture throughout firm: separate teams

acquisition

what are you actually getting - you want what’s inside that company, not the shares

real battleground is for the customer - who gets the customer?

why do fintech companies want to collaborate = instant access to customer base

as soon as we get into negotiations and talking about who owns the customer, the shutters go up. (tech want to be the providers, not the plumbing at the back)

collaboration

most tricky

who owns the IP in what’s being developed? etc only true IP lawyers can make sense of this, need true expertise

contract lawyers, M&A

good understanding of risk

gone are the days we practiced law, excellent lawyer —> helping clients make decisions, giving commercial business advice

By and large, most banks say they’ll go all three, but mostly collaboration

from financial institution to tech powerhouse

back office considerations becoming key revenue generators

they’ve never thought of exploiting this data

how we take data/IP + commercialise it

blackrock have developed a tool to manage risk, advise traders about what decisions to make—> helps people make decisions. made available on commoditised basis to other asset managers. (black rock financial services ?) = commoditised platform, very successful

tech that can be used by other people in the industry —> software house

data, IP, tech licensing

1) AI: prediction, in next 5-8 years we will see a real change, real impact, really displacing jobs, helping people do jobs in a different/better way

lawyers get to understand tech when helping clients deal with it, but also apply knowledge of the law/risks/understanding of regulation

only if you understand financial reg is that as senior manager you have to understand how services are being run

2) Tech renewal

infrastructure - legacy systems, to outsource/not (contracts - how to transform existing environ to future + what happens when it goes wrong), sysc requirements, data flows, legal resourcing

3) Cybersecurity + GDPR

big data, big problems

EU’s GDPR + NIS directive

new changes: right to be forgotten, rights as owner of that data, obligations on those who act as agent/processor

Fines up to 4% of global turnover for a serious breach

significantly increased compliance burden

action required now

Q&A

contract: who owns vs who controls, ability to use it, control it, can exclude others from it??

products geared toward empowering customers + their control/owner over data

recognising value in data = letting us monetise it, giving better IR

enough data points —> analyse to acquire + target (potential) customers

upselling

how much value does some of your data really have? (google knows a lot about you —> more generically usable. while uber knows a few places you’ve been)

massive role to play for lawyers in cybersecurity (outsourcing)

not a question of if, but when, you will suffer a breach

lawyers drive cybersecurity plans within companies - need to come up with a product + plan

not in technical evaluation, but policy prevention  

regulators don’t expect you to have impregnable walls, you need to have planned for it with, informed in the right time

GDPR impact on blockchain

classic problem

compatibility with right to be forgotten

you’ll just have to be told as a data subject, that though you have a right, if you’re on the blockchain there is no technical way to remove it

give customers as much info as you can about the fact that it’ll always be there

play with exceptions of GDPR?

pretty sure there will be a case that comes up

CME - making bitcoin tradeable —> become a commodity

thank god not a securities lawyer lol

underlying tech is there to stay

potential monopoly law around data because they have such a competitive advantage?

possibly, yes

if they affect customer outcomes

not sure if we’ll ever get to that stage

competition law - watch this space

EU regulators pretty receptive to fintech ATM

ICO phenomenon

AMF in France, consultation paper

forward thinking ideas on how to regulate

london has a very vibrant fintech space - banks, creatives, tech

currently are focusing on core financial services space

fintech with no single space in europe

very mobile community anyway

why haven’t banks launched something in the space of monzo, starling (apps)?

uh they have

esp with PSD2/open banking

[dawnajaynes32]

Hajj Flemings on Design, Civic Innovation & Crushing the Digital Divide

Register today for the free course “5 Skills Every Design Needs to Know.”

Hajj Flemings is the founder of Brand Camp University and Rebrand Detroit. In 2011, he was one of eight entrepreneurs selected for the CNN’s Black in America 4: The New Promised Land Silicon Valley documentary with Soledad O’brien. I was thrilled to chat with Hajj recently about design, social impact and civic innovation.

What kind of projects are you working on right now?

Branding of people and cities and closing the digital divide for small businesses. Ultimately our work centers around helping entrepreneurs eat. Pure entrepreneurs have to kill their prey every day, and so understanding the fundamentals [of] communicating a compelling story to [the] target customer is important. Rebrand Cities is a global civic design partnership with WordPress.com. Our audacious goal is to get 10,000 businesses online. Rebrand Cities is a game-changing project because it is connecting WordPress, which powers 30% of the Internet, to the local businesses to tell their story. We are helping real businesses in local cities and neighborhoods to become more successful/sustainable by creating a digital presence that drives commerce.

Can design change the world?

No. People change the world, not design. Good design in many cases can be harder to discover than bad design because it is invisible to the process—we just know that it works. The reason that I say no is because I believe that people change the world. There are a ton of examples where really smart people create solutions for other experts and forget they should be focused on helping people by meeting a human need in the simplest way possible. To maximize impact, this has to be a priority and should be obviously. However, this isn’t reality. Our on-boarding process for Rebrand Cities has evolved since its inception, and I will give you an example [of] how [a] human-centered focus and understanding your customer can change the world. Our initial process would take weeks [to] help a business owner understand their process, get them to create their content and get the first version of their website online. We now get to version 1.0 in a matter of hours by creating organized chaos and making the development process an interactive, immersive experience.   

  I’m talking with passionate small business owners in Chicago for @rebrandcities We are closing the digital divide.

A post shared by Hajj Flemings (@hajjflemings) on Mar 22, 2018 at 1:20pm PDT

We share a love for making design and technology more accessible—can you tell us a bit about that passion of yours?

Numbers always tell a story. There are two data points that helped me to realize that the wealth gap between which we know will continue to expand between the 1% and the rest of the U.S. Forty-six percent of businesses don’t have a website. 91% of people have an online experience before they make a purchase. This communicates how important the technology gap will be to the economics of small business. We also believe good design is good for business and that design is a business tool. When we started working with small businesses in the Grandmont Rosedale neighborhood on the west side of Detroit in 2015 it became abundantly clear that small and medium-size businesses were not the same, and that having an inclusive mindset would serve us well. Thinking about the fringes is good business for all businesses. We discovered unique needs such as website accessibility for people who are color blind, and digital literacy for a more seasoned business owner that needed assistance in navigating this foreign digital space. These scenarios and numerous others fuel our passion to crush the digital divide.

Brand Camp University is “an educational platform that is preparing people for the future of work.” What are the top three skills people need to be ready for the future of work?

The future of work is not linear, and we are challenging the five generations of people that are in the workplace that they need to prepare for jobs that don’t exist and build a skill and mindset that is portable [and] that leverages technology. We are focused on helping people connect with opportunities in a global economy that allow people to bring their whole self to work.

Three Skills of the Future

Be a Doer: Getting people comfortable with being uncomfortable is a hard thing. People are obsessed with perfection and are petrified to start because everybody has a platform and can share their opinion.

Be a Storyteller: Everybody is a storytelling whether you are an introvert or you are an extrovert. I am convinced that storytelling is a learned behavior. The future favors those who embrace this [and] put themselves in a vulnerable position.

Own Your Mountain: There are a lot of things that you can do in life, but owning something and sticking to it is important. Most of us have shiny-ball-in-the-room mentality and jump from thing to thing because it is popular. So I recommend people think about their signature skills and identify how they are valued in the real world and see if you can get people to adopt, download or buy the widget you have created.

As a human brand designer, you’ve done incredible work in the city of Detroit using branding and digital campaigns to change the narrative of underserved neighborhoods. What’s been the biggest challenge through this endeavor?

One of the biggest challenges is that the people with the resources and ability to work in disconnected communities are the furthest from understanding the problems they have the resources to address. They don’t understand the day-to-day life issues of the people that they serve, so they bring a worldview that is not grounded in reality and try to force their ideas on a very hardworking community without concern or seeing the value that they bring to the table. So the process is typically viewed as a one-way exchange where the community that is being served should be grateful that we are even working with you instead of looking at it as a mutually beneficial knowledge/experience exchange. One of our goals is to create a two-way learning model that creates an environment that values the experience and worldview of both communities.

What makes a good brand (or a brand good)?

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. This drives the economies of your personal and/or business brand. Good brands deliver on their brand promise authentically and create experiences that people value, share and want to spend their money on and give their attention too.

It’s amazing the reach you have through your speaking engagements and events. You speak on a wide range of topics, but one of those is the “reputation economy.” Can you talk a bit about that?

I have been fortunate to speak at some of the top institutions of higher learning like Harvard University and some of the top brands like Disney, which has taught me a great deal about the value of a brand and that it is much deeper than colors and logos. In today’s economy we are battling for attention, and getting attention without having strong character is the quickest way to lose everything you have worked [for] your entire life. We focus on how strong character/integrity translated into new business, increased opportunities, brand awareness and trust with people that you have never met.

From your perspective, what is the value of a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving as opposed to focusing on a single area of expertise?

We don’t know what we don’t know, but what we do know is that diverse businesses have stronger bottom lines. A recent McKinsey study shows, “Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.” (Source Fortune). Diversity isn’t constrained to race, so having a multidisciplinary approach brings difference perspectives and solutions to the table. Women see the world different than men. Financial leaders at the table force the business owners to evaluate business models to make sure the business is viable. We try to bring as many different perspectives to the table without slowing down the process because at the end of the day we want people to execute, deliver—ship.

  A post shared by Hajj Flemings (@hajjflemings) on Mar 22, 2018 at 1:23pm PDT

What’s next for Hajj Flemings?

I was recently listening to a podcast by Seth Godin on Status Roles, and he posed this question: “Who eats first?” This might seem like a harmless question with no real significance or depth to it, but it really has a lot of meaning, and it gets to the heart of what is next for me. This question takes me back to the Fall of 2011 when I was one of eight entrepreneurs selected to be in CNN’s Black in American 4: The New Promised Land Silicon Valley hosted by Soledad O’Brien. This is where I was first exposed to the term meritocracy. The next big thing for me is deeper development of Rebrand Cities and Brand Camp University to make cities places for all people. We are in discussion with our first international city for the Rebrand Cities project, which is helping our team realize that the digital divide isn’t a U.S. thing, but it is a global issue and is valued by cities and municipal partners. We will continue working with WordPress.com and other global partners to make the web easier to be used by all people.

Editor’s Note: Flemings landed a spot on the HOW 100: A listing of 100 of the most talented and influential creatives working today. The complete list will be published soon—stay tuned!

The post Hajj Flemings on Design, Civic Innovation & Crushing the Digital Divide appeared first on HOW Design.

Hajj Flemings on Design, Civic Innovation & Crushing the Digital Divide syndicated post

[creativesage]

(via Introduction: 2018 Global Human Capital Trends | Deloitte Insights)

Introduction: The Rise of the Social Enterprise 2018 — Global Human Capital Trends                                        

                                               By Dimple Agarwal,  Josh Bersin,  Gaurav Lahiri,  Jeff Schwartz, and Erica Volini            

            Organizations are no longer judged only for their financial performance, or even the quality of their products or services. Rather, they are being evaluated on the basis of their impact on society at large—transforming them from business enterprises into social enterprises.

The Growing Importance of Social Capital

Learn more:

- View 2018 Global Human Capital Trends or access the app

- Explore the infographic

- Watch the video

- Read the press release

- Download the full report or create a custom PDF.

The 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report showcases a profound shift facing business leaders worldwide: The rapid rise of what we call the social enterprise. This shift reflects the growing importance of social capital in shaping an organization’s purpose, guiding its relationships with stakeholders, and influencing its ultimate success or failure.

In 2018, we are witnessing seismic changes in the workforce, the workplace, and the technologies used in the world of work. Based on this year’s global survey of more than 11,000 business and HR leaders, as well as interviews with executives from some of today’s leading organizations, we believe that a fundamental change is underway. Organizations are no longer assessed based only on traditional metrics such as financial performance, or even the quality of their products or services. Rather, organizations today are increasingly judged on the basis of their relationships with their workers, their customers, and their communities, as well as their impact on society at large—transforming them from business enterprises into social enterprises.

In many ways, social capital is achieving a newfound status next to financial and physical capital in value. In a recent survey, for instance, 65 percent of CEOs rated “inclusive growth” as a top-three strategic concern, more than three times greater than the proportion citing “shareholder value.”1 Today, successful businesses must incorporate external trends, perspectives, and voices by maintaining positive relationships, not just with customers and employees, but also with local communities, regulators, and a variety of other stakeholders. Building these relationships challenges business leaders to listen closely to constituents, act transparently with information, break down silos to enhance collaboration, and build trust, credibility, and consistency through their actions. This is not a matter of altruism: Doing so is critical to maintaining an organization’s reputation; to attracting, retaining, and engaging critical workers; and to cultivating loyalty among customers.

What Is a Social Enterprise?

A social enterprise is an organization whose mission combines revenue growth and profit-making with the need to respect and support its environment and stakeholder network. This includes listening to, investing in, and actively managing the trends that are shaping today’s world. It is an organization that shoulders its responsibility to be a good citizen (both inside and outside the organization), serving as a role model for its peers and promoting a high degree of collaboration at every level of the organization.

In past Global Human Capital Trends reports, we have noted the movement of many organizations toward a “network of teams” operating model that aims to enable greater collaboration and internal agility.2 Now, this movement has been joined by the growing shift from an internal, enterprise focus to an external, ecosystem one (figure 1). Organizations on the leading edge of both of these changes embody our concept of the social enterprise: an organization that is alert enough to sense, and responsive enough to accommodate, the gamut of stakeholder expectations and demands.

The Last Decade: Building toward Today’s Tipping Point

Why has this shift occurred? We believe that it is driven by social, economic, and political changes that have grown since the global financial crisis. Despite the economic recovery the world has seen since 2008, many people feel frustrated that financial gains have failed to improve individuals’ lives, address social problems, support political stability, or mitigate technology’s unintended consequences. People today have less trust in their political and social institutions than they have in years; many expect business leaders to fill the gap.

This point was made this year by BlackRock chief executive Laurence Fink. In his annual letter to CEOs, Fink noted that people are increasingly “turning to the private sector and asking that companies respond to broader societal challenges” and demanding that organizations “serve a social purpose.”3 Fink stated that shareholders, including BlackRock itself, are now evaluating companies based on this standard. A New York Times report suggested that the letter could be a “watershed moment on Wall Street” that raises questions about “the very nature of capitalism.”4

Among the many factors contributing to the rise of the social enterprise, we see three powerful macro forces driving the urgency of this change.

First, the power of the individual is growing, with millennials at the forefront. For the first time in mature markets, young people believe that their lives will be worse than their parents’—and they are actively questioning the core premises of corporate behavior and the economic and social principles that guide it.5 Among this group, social capital plays an outsized role in where they work and what they buy, and 86 percent of millennials think that business success should be measured in terms of more than just financial performance.6 Millennials comprise a majority of the workforce in many countries, and their power will likely grow over time.

This shift in power to the individual is being propelled by today’s hyper-connected world, which enables people to track information about companies and their products, express their opinions to a wide audience, and sign onto social movements, globally and in real time. Back in 2015, we called this trend toward greater transparency “the naked organization”;7 in 2018, the individuals know and expect even more from companies than they did three short years ago.

Second, businesses are being expected to fill a widening leadership vacuum in society. Across the globe, people trust business more than government. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer reported that people worldwide place 52 percent trust in business “to do what is right,” versus just 43 percent in government.8 In the United States, in particular, trust in government has hit a four-year low, at just 33 percent.9 There is a widespread perception that political systems are growing more and more polarized and less and less effective at meeting social challenges. Citizens are looking to business to fill the void on critical issues such as income inequality, health care, diversity, and cybersecurity to help make the world more equal and fair.

This expectation is placing immense pressure on companies, but it is also creating opportunities. Organizations that engage with people and demonstrate that they are worthy of trust are burnishing their reputation, winning allies, and influencing or supplanting traditional public policy mechanisms. CEOs such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff have an unprecedented ability to activate their companies for the good of society.10 Consider the organization jointly created by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan Chase to lower health care costs for employees—tackling an issue that government cannot solve on its own, while also promising to deliver business benefits.11 On the other hand, companies that appear aloof, tone-deaf, or disengaged face harsh headlines, negative attention on social media, and tough questions from a range of stakeholders.

Third, technological change is having unforeseen impacts on society even as it creates massive opportunities to achieve sustainable, inclusive growth. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and new communications technologies are fundamentally changing how work gets done, who does it, and how it influences society.12 For instance, machine learning was not in the mainstream three years ago. Today, it is simultaneously one of IT’s hottest areas—and a source of tremendous anxiety about potential job losses. People increasingly realize that rapid technological change, while holding out the promise of valuable opportunities, also creates unforeseen impacts that can undermine social cohesion. Many stakeholders are alarmed, and they expect businesses to channel this force for the broader good.

The good news is that technological advances can open up new opportunities for businesses to have a positive impact on society. Reflecting this view, 87 percent of C-level executives say that Industry 4.0—the industrial revolution brought about by the combination of digital and physical technologies—will lead to more equality and stability, and 74 percent say business will have more influence than governments or other organizations to shape this future.13

Becoming a Social Enterprise

Foundational to behaving as a social enterprise is to listen carefully to the external as well as the internal environment—not just business partners and customers, but all parties in society that an organization influences and is influenced by. In today’s world, the listening opportunity is greater than ever if organizations truly take advantage of the people data they have at their fingertips. The increasingly hyper-connected nature of the workplace means that interactions between and among workers and the outside world can be a tremendous source for analysis if managed appropriately. Leaders need to take a proactive approach to managing this wealth of information and leveraging it to keep an eye on the trends both inside and outside of the workplace.

Being a social enterprise also means investing in the broader social ecosystem, starting with an organization’s own employees. It means treating all workers—on- and off-balance-sheet—in a fair, transparent, and unbiased way. Leaders should seek to provide a work environment that promotes longevity and well-being, not only in an individual’s career, but also in the physical, mental, and financial spheres. By doing this, an organization invests both in its own workforce and in the workforce ecosystem as a whole, which benefits both the organization and society at large.

Finally, a social enterprise seeks to actively manage its position in the social ecosystem by engaging with stakeholders and strategically determining and pursuing the kind of relationship it wants to maintain with each. This cannot be done in a siloed way. Hence, this year we have provided a set of actions that C-suite leaders can take related to each trend. Each area of focus requires strong collaboration amongst leaders both across the organization and outside of it. Leaders should form relationships with the governments and regulatory bodies that shape the “rules of the road,” work collaboratively with them to create and sustain a fair, just, and equitable marketplace, and partner with communities and educational institutions to help sustain a steady flow of talent with the right skills for the organization��and the broader economy—to thrive.

2018’s Ten Human Capital Trends: Importance and Respondent Readiness

Respondents generally agree that, while each of the following trends is important, most organizations are not yet ready to meet expectations.

Explore the data further in the Global Human Capital Trends app.

2018’s Ten Human Capital Trends

The 10 human capital trends we explore in this year’s report come together to create an integrated view of the social enterprise.

[See infographics above] From the top: The Symphonic C-suite Trend 1. The Symphonic C-suite: Teams Leading Teams

Behaving as a social enterprise and managing the external environment’s macro trends effectively demands an unprecedented level of cross-functional vision, connectivity, and collaboration from C-suite leaders. To do this, they must behave as what we call the “symphonic C-suite,” in which an organization’s top executives play together as a team while also leading their own functional teams, all in harmony. This approach enables the C-suite to understand the many impacts that external forces have on and within the organization—not just on single functions—and plot coordinated, agile responses.

The symphonic C-suite is the next stage in the ongoing evolution of leadership models. This new model is necessary to help leaders to understand, manage, and respond to the complex social capital issues that organizations face, enabling them to tap opportunities, manage risks, and build relationships with internal and external stakeholders. What’s more, the symphonic leadership model is vital for growth: Our survey finds that respondents who indicate their C-suite executives “regularly collaborate on long-term interdependent work” are a third more likely to expect their companies to grow at 10 percent or more during the next year than respondents whose CxOs operate independently.

The C-suite must lead an organization’s response to the other nine trends highlighted in this report. The pace and complexity of the changes involved, and the high stakes of success or failure, elevate these as C-level issues, which cannot be delegated or approached in silos. Only a symphonic C-suite team is sufficient for the scale and speed of the following nine trends. In our chapter on the symphonic C-suite, we call out specific actions executives can take to drive greater collaboration.

The power of the Individual

As the power of the individual grows, organizations are revamping their approaches to workforce management, rewards systems, and career models to better listen and respond. In particular, as workers and networks outside the organization grow in importance, companies are striving to build effective ongoing relationships with every segment of the workforce ecosystem. In this year’s report, we have included actions for the individual worker to consider in influencing and managing their personalization and career experiences. The challenge is to figure out how to appropriately address each individual’s preferences and priorities while engaging with a more diverse set of workers and workforce segments than ever before.

Trend 2. The workforce Ecosystem: Managing beyond the Enterprise

Business leaders and chief human resources officers (CHROs) recognize the need to actively and strategically manage relationships with workforce segments beyond the enterprise, which increasingly affect how an organization delivers services and interacts with customers. When asked to forecast the makeup of their workforce in 2020, 37 percent of survey respondents expected a rise in contractors, 33 percent foresaw an increase in freelancers, and 28 percent expected growth in gig workers. Organizations are finding ways to align their culture and management practices with these external talent segments—engaging the workforce ecosystem for mutual benefit.

Trend 3. New Rewards: Personalized, Agile, and Holistic

Leveraging their power as individuals, employees are asking for more personalized, agile, and holistic rewards, including a focus on fair and open pay. While companies recognize this overall shift, only 8 percent report that their rewards program is “very effective” at creating a personalized, flexible solution. Early experiments are exploring how to develop a holistic variety of rewards and match them to individual preferences, across diverse talent segments and on a continuous basis.

Trend 4. From Careers to Experiences: New Pathways

In a 21st-century career, the individual and his or her experiences take center stage. Instead of a steady progression along a job-based pathway, leading organizations are shifting toward a model that empowers individuals to acquire valuable experiences, explore new roles, and continually reinvent themselves. However, 59 percent of our survey respondents rate their organizations as not effective or only somewhat effective at empowering people to manage their own careers. Improvement in this area is essential to attract critical talent, especially as technology shifts the skills landscape.

Filling Society’s Leadership Vacuum

Leading companies are developing strategies that address societal concerns such as longevity and well-being—and doing so in ways that help improve productivity and performance. Those in this vanguard are finding rich opportunities to build social capital and become a leading voice on key societal issues.

Trend 5. The Longevity Dividend: Work in an Era of 100-year Lives

Forward-looking organizations see extended longevity and population aging as an opportunity. Twenty percent of this year’s survey respondents said that they are partnering with older workers to develop new career models. This longevity dividend enables companies to both address a pressing societal issue and tap into a proven, committed, and diverse set of workers. However, doing this requires innovative practices and policies to support extended careers, as well as collaboration between business leaders and workers, to tackle shared challenges such as age bias and pension shortfalls.

Trend 6. Citizenship and Social Impact: Society Holds the Mirror

An organization’s track record of corporate citizenship and social impact now has a direct bearing on its core identity and strategy. Engagement with other stakeholders on topics such as diversity, gender pay equity, income inequality, immigration, and climate change can lift financial performance and brand value, while failure to engage can destroy reputation and alienate key audiences. Many organizations are still catching up: 77 percent of our respondents say that citizenship is important, but only 18 percent say this issue is a top priority reflected in corporate strategy.

Trend 7. Well-being: A Strategy and a Responsibility

As the line between work and life blurs further, employees are demanding that organizations expand their benefits offerings to include a wide range of programs for physical, mental, financial, and spiritual health. In response, employers are investing in well-being programs as both a societal responsibility and a talent strategy. More than 50 percent of survey respondents view a variety of such programs as “valuable” or “highly valuable” to employees, but big gaps remain between what employees value and what companies are delivering.

Leveraging Technology for Sustainable Growth

Organizations are looking to capitalize on the benefits of a surge of new AI-based software, robotics, workplace connectivity tools, and people data applications, while also mitigating potential downsides and unforeseen effects. These tools and investments can help to redesign work architecture, lift productivity, and enhance people efforts, but organizations must also pay attention to and respect their impacts on the workforce as a whole.

Trend 8. AI, Robotics, and Automation: Put Humans in the Loop

The influx of AI, robotics, and automation into the workplace has dramatically accelerated in the last year, transforming in-demand roles and skills inside and outside organizations. Perhaps surprisingly, those roles and skills focus on the “uniquely human” rather than the purely technical: Survey respondents predict tremendous future demand for skills such as complex problem-solving (63 percent), cognitive abilities (55 percent), and social skills (52 percent). To be able to maximize the potential value of these technologies today and minimize the potential adverse impacts on the workforce tomorrow, organizations must put humans in the loop—reconstructing work, retraining people, and rearranging the organization. The greatest opportunity is not just to redesign jobs or automate routine work, but to fundamentally rethink “work architecture” to benefit organizations, teams, and individuals.

Trend 9. The Hyper-Connected Workplace: Will Productivity Reign?

New communications tools are rapidly entering the workplace. Seventy percent of respondents believe workers will spend more time on collaboration platforms in the future, 67 percent see growth in “work-based social media,” and 62 percent predict an increase in instant messaging. But as these tools migrate from personal life to the workplace, organizations must apply their expertise in team management, goal-setting, and employee development to ensure that they actually improve organizational, team, and individual performance and promote the necessary collaboration to truly become a social enterprise. Like the outside world, organizations are becoming hyper-connected; can they also become hyper-productive?

Trend 10. People Data: How Far is Too Far?

The rapid increase in data availability and the advent of powerful people analytics tools have generated rich opportunities for HR and organizations—but they are now also generating a variety of potential risks. While more than half of our survey respondents are actively managing the risk of employee perceptions of personal data use, and a similar proportion is managing the risk of legal liability, only a quarter are managing the impact on their consumer brand. Organizations face a tipping point: Develop a set of well-defined policies, security safeguards, transparency measures, and ongoing communication around the use of people data, or risk employee, customer, and societal backlash.

A Call to Action

The 2018 Global Human Capital Trends report sounds a wake-up call for organizations. The rise of the social enterprise requires a determined focus on building social capital by engaging with diverse stakeholders, accounting for external trends, creating a sense of mission and purpose throughout the organization, and devising strategies that manage new societal expectations. At stake is nothing less than an organization’s reputation, relationships, and, ultimately, success or failure.

In this new era, human capital is inextricably tied to social capital. This reality demands a fundamental pivot in how organizations do business today—and how they prepare for the human capital challenges of the future.

[Excerpt from the introductory post — click on the title link to read it with notes, appendix, all illustrations, and links to other relevant articles at Deloitte.com.]

***

At Creative Sage™, we love to connect corporate leaders and entrepreneurs with good causes, and help companies start genuine Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability, Social Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship, Impact Investing and/or philanthropy programs that are a win-win for all partners. We’re also researching new developments in the Sharing Economy that include new business models to increase profits, and also support social good.

Please do not hesitate to email us if you would like to discuss your situation and find out more about how we can help your organization move forward to a more innovative and profitable future, strengthening your branding and resonance with customers while helping to do good in the world through appropriate, authentic CSR partnerships with nonprofits, philanthropists, educational institutions and programs, or government agencies and community organizations.

We can also help you connect with celebrities and other notable people who can help amplify your message of social good, or headline entertainment events and concerts for good causes. You can call us at 1-510-845-5510 in San Francisco / Silicon Valley. We look forward to talking with you!

***

[tortuga-aak]

AI and security were among the top trends discussed at Money20/20

BI Intelligence

At this year's Money20/20 conference, held in Las Vegas from October 22-25, BI Intelligence identified three emerging trends that will likely dictate much of the innovation in the payments space over the next year: AI's emergence in financial services, a reinvigorated focus on payments security, and partnerships to chase the network effect.

1. Financial services firms are captivated by how AI might revolutionize their businesses. However, the number of AI-specific announcements from major players was relatively limited compared with how much of the dialogue at the conference centered on future use cases. 

Here are a few major AI announcements from the conference:

AI technology firm Clinc partnered with financial services provider Enacomm on a reseller agreement that will bring Clinc’s “Finie” technology, which helps banks collect data, personalize product offers, and create a “tailored customer experience,” to more financial institutions across the country.

Personetics, a cognitive banking company, showcased how banks can leverage AI to “nudge” customers — giving them short, tangible steps to encourage specific behaviors — as a means of improving financial behavior and growing engagement.

In a panel discussion, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak noted that the key to industry success will be investing in AI and building “centralized teams” focused on deploying it in ways that augment rather than replace humans.

In general, the most mature use cases of AI are on the back-end. Thanks to recent advancements in natural language processing (NLP), conversational use cases, like messaging app bots, are receiving attention from financial services providers. But they’re far from the most natural applications of AI technology — big data and analytics tools, risk and fraud prevention platforms, and regtech offerings are among many areas in financial services where AI is driving more significant returns today. 

BI Intelligence

With so much hype around AI's potential, it's important to focus on the real problems it can solve. 

Banks think AI has the potential to fundamentally change customer interactions. Seventy-nine percent of financial institutions think AI will “revolutionize” the way financial firms interact with consumers, according to Accenture. There are multiple ways this could play out — for example, conversational interfaces could become mainstream, or AI-driven insights could arm call center or branch employees with personalized and relevant advice to pass on to customers. 

So firms believe that there are clear payoffs for this research, investment, and technology. Top reasons that firms are investing in AI include better data insight, improved productivity, and higher cost savings, according to Accenture. By focusing on effectively deploying AI for narrow and well-defined tasks tied to those reasons, banks could best use AI by treating it as a surgical tool for specific use cases, rather than viewing it as a panacea. 

2. In the wake of high-profile data breaches, financial services firms like banks or payments technology providers are more focused than ever on securing consumer data.  

Bank of America (BofA) teamed up with Intel to bring biometric authentication to online banking users on the PC. The new tool, which will use Intel Online Connect technology, will allow BofA customers with the appropriate hardware to authenticate their PC logins using a fingerprint rather than a password or other form of authentication.

Mastercard launched a new application programming interface (API), called Consumer Control, that allows customers to use their banking apps to gain an overhead view of where they’ve stored their card information online as a means of better controlling their “digital payment footprint.”

Samsung partnered with a number of firms, including Diebold Nixdorf and Moxtra, to showcase its “Nexsign” technology. The technology uses biometric authentication, including fingerprint, facial recognition, iris scanning, and voice recognition, to better verify transactions on mobile.

Identity fraud is on the rise, so it’s important for firms to find ways to protect customers, or risk losing them.

Concerns about data security are higher than ever — and rightfully so. A record-breaking 15.4 million US consumers were affected by identity fraud in 2016, marking a 16% annual increase, according to Javelin. That’s leading to concern, which is only intensified by the barrage of high-profile briefings in the news, capped off by the Equifax attack that could impact over one million customers. Additionally, financial services fraud is spiking as well, according to LexisNexis. 

And so finding ways to visibly protect identity will be critical in maintaining loyalty. The risk of security failures are drastic — 19% of consumers would stop shopping at a breached retailer, and 33% would take a long-term break. Unfortunately, issuing banks often take the blame for breaches they had no part in. Against a backdrop of institutional security failures, financial services providers must take care to set themselves apart from the pack with regards to consumer protection. 

3. Firms are aggressively partnering to build the network effect. For a long time, tech firms focused on being "walled gardens," essentially owning a space from top to bottom as a means of beating out their rivals. Payments firms were no exception, with most players trying to build full-suite offerings. But that’s beginning to change as competition heats up and firms try to grab as many new customers as possible at a low acquisition cost, largely because the sheer noise in the space is making it hard to grab consumer attention — a problem that expanding the addressable base can help solve. 

Barclaycard US will issue a co-branded Uber credit card, which allows Uber riders to apply and enroll in the card directly in the app. The card provides robust rewards and attainable startup bonuses with no annual fee.

Bank-owned peer-to-peer (P2P) payment network Zelle forged new technology partnerships with firms like ACI Worldwide and IBM to get new financial institutions onto the Zelle network, and using real-time payments, more quickly and at a lower cost.

Processor First Data announced a swath of new partnerships. It's partnered with UnionPay to enable acceptance at its merchants; with Amazon for restaurant mobile order-ahead; and with Apple to bolster support for loyalty and rewards on mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) Clover.

As the digital payments industry becomes more crowded, access to the right population is the key to success. Currently, if a certain aspect of the payments industry begins to heat up, other firms are likely to "piggyback" onto it, which is leading to crowding. That hurts adoption, as it confuses customers by giving them too many choices and adding friction. By partnering, companies can break through the crowd and expand the size of their addressable base, which in turn can help them more effectively beat the noise and outrun their competition. 

This was a note delivered to BI Intelligence subscribers. To receive more insights like this and gain instant access to BI Intelligence's research archive containing 200+ reports covering all things digital, subscribe to BI Intelligence today!

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[martechadvisor-blog]

Preventing Hacks: How to keep your B2B Strategy Secure

Does being digital have to mean being vulnerable? If data is the new gold, then databases are the new goldmines. Here is how you can keep them secure.

With the growing numbers of devices that are constantly embedded with network connectivity, there is a continual threat to data security. The number of devices itself gives hackers a larger canvas on which to prey on. With IoT (Internet of Things) prevailing everywhere, hackers can now get creative and even break-in to a firm’s CCTV camera system to create havoc if they so desire, since it’s probably connected and synced to a network thanks to IoT.

Security implications and data protection is fundamental today to not only ensure user-privacy but to also potentially save a company from damages worth millions. 

Recent Malware that Demands every Businesses Attention The word ransomware became a household name this year when WannaCry spread rapidly around the world affecting not only mid to large entities but also public utilities. The ransomware had all but crippled National Health Service hospitals and facilities in the United Kingdom.

Later on, US officials concluded that the ransomware was a North Korean government project gone wrong. In total, WannaCry had snared $130,000 or 52 bitcoins. 

One of the key reasons that the WannaCry attack came in parts was due to a Windows vulnerability. Microsoft had released a MS17-010 patch for the bug but the institutions who hadn’t applied it were still vulnerable to the attack. 

As luck would have it, this was followed a month later by another wave of ransomware attacks which infected multiple networks across countries. Big business brands like Danish shipping company Maersk, and even Russian oil giant Rosnoft were largely hit. This malware was given a range of names like Petya, NotPetya and seemed more advanced than the infamous WannaCry. The lesson in general was- everybody who is digital is vulnerable, large or small, and security should be the priority online as much as offline.

Every B2B should Pay Heed With investments in martech exploding, it is definitely worth it to bear in mind that ‘eighty percent of investors will not take a chance on a smaller firm that has suffered a data breach’, as Holly Rollo, CMO of RSA Security , a business-driven security firm noted in a recent blog.  

Smaller companies may lack sufficiently experienced staff or roles like that of Chief Security Officer. The usual process is for an IT network person to keep the network safe, maintain the laptops and associated IT equipment. 

But is that adequate in a time when most sellers are sitting on data goldmines that need to be protected? Data is big in B2B marketing. With company and employee sensitive information sitting on their systems, B2Bs need to own up to the responsibility of protecting the data as well as protect their customer relationships. The increasing adoption of marketing automation,  ever-increasing marketing technology stack to engage with prospects and customers, Big Data becoming a reality even for the smallest of firms, and ever increasing opportunities to interact digitally with the universe of stakeholders are all reasons as to why security has to take centerstage today. 

Privacy, Security and Marketing Automation Overall privacy and security of Marketing Automation is a key area for B2Bs to consider. It is important to not only identify existing threats and the way they corrupt entire networks or systems, but also to have a fair assessment of emerging cyber threats along with secure ways to prevent them. 

When choosing automation for various levels of marketing, it is crucial for B2Bs to demand answers to questions regarding:

Security of owned data during integration, 

Security when using third-party functions, 

Levels of foreseen data loss or threat in event of a breach while using automated tools.

Common Threats Are Faced by even Leading Businesses Typically, businesses are exposed to an array of cyber threats. Another recent example is the Yahoo hack where close to 1 billion accounts were compromised by this biggest data breach in history. At the time, Yahoo had said that, “An unauthorized party” broke into the accounts. The breach may have been related to theft of Yahoo’s proprietary code.

Even the big players are susceptible to threats and although cyber security is something that can be considered simple, it is often overlooked. 

One of the more common modern threats to surface are DDoS -- Distributed Denial of Service wherein a deliberate attempt to overload a particular target by sending a large volume of traffic to that location is made. DDoS attacks have in fact been used more and more frequently. In 2017 itself, DDoS attacks were launched on popular sites like Al Jazeera, Le Monde, Le Figaro among many more. 

While some hackers may orchestrate such attacks mainly to cause harm, other not too widely known downtimes may simply have been due to insufficient hosting ability to cope with large volumes of online traffic. 

Simple Ways to Keep a B2B Site Secure  When a personal computer or an employee’s computer that is part of a larger network is hacked, the breach could involve an array of disturbances from stealing saved information for various websites, or stealing logins, thereby giving the hacker enough dope to access online resources of the company’s network too. 

What Every B2B Should Keep in Mind when it comes to Data Security

Data Security is very crucial to every business size

Hackers attempt to breach data all the time, no matter the type or size of company

70% of digital document security attacks are against small businesses

Regular password and software updates act as a strong line of defense

Always use long phrases or complicated words to secure your network

Never continue using pre-set passwords, hackers are already aware of them

Secure important documents using an information-centric data security system

Backing up of important data should always be a priority

Companies who collect key customer centric information should focus on adding more layers of security to protect vulnerable user data

To keep customer information secure, the ability to encrypt data that’s saved on a server, as well as “data in transit”, i.e., information that is in the process of being transmitted takes priority

Understanding how and why these hacks occur can save small to medium companies a lot of time and effort. 

Hacks can come from:

Compromised websites (websites that employees or those part of the network system who visit insecure sites),

Infected software. 

Some modern hackers can make use of bots to scan IP’s of users with the attempt to gauge some weaknesses within the system. Integrated components are now a norm and part of most websites. Their upkeep and maintenance too require a fair bit of debugging and attention. These various components that now come in the form of plugins, widgets and more can also lead to security issues if left unsupervised. 

One effective way to prevent this from happening is by regularly updating software and code. 

Content Management Systems serve as easy targets. Because, one main breach into the core back-end system can wipe out the site’s content completely. Although B2Bs will be smart enough to ensure they have backups in place, knowing that the CMS makes for an easy target can ensure that adequate measures are taken at the base-level itself to ensure that any data breach is blocked before it turns nasty.

Some basic action points, like ensuring your CMS is not outdated, plugins and themes are updated with proper security fixes and the sort will help in better content management and protection. 

Server Attacks:Besides these, there could be various kinds of server hacks. Given that a lot of companies today use ‘shared’ servers, B2Bs who do so should be doubly aware. When you use a shared server, the same drives are being used to host all accounts, CPUs, memory, blogs, even your ecommerce portal. If one of the websites hosted on the server get hacked, your own site could be susceptible to data threat indirectly too.

On this note, it also pays to keep in mind that a hack aimed at the hosting company can also put your own information at risk. 

Careful with Phishing Email: Phishing emails or messages are created with the aim of duping the recipient of their user credentials. Several times, hackers will take the added effort to create an email account that looks genuine and provide links to ‘log in’ to your account. In most cases, these links lead to hacked websites that host a fake page to obtain your user information. Knowing that this is an ever-growing threat and consciously informing every employee who belongs to a particular network can help save millions in further damage.  

Paying Attention to Overall Website Security: According to an earlier Symantec reports, hacks cost small to medium sized businesses over $ 188,000 on average per year. If this isn’t bothersome enough, more than 60% of these companies were forced to shut shop due to their inability to recover from financial damages. The sad thing is, these organizations could easily have still been operating today if they had security systems in place to prevent cyber-attacks. Constant vigilance is one way of ensuring that your website, data, and network is always shielded from various kinds of malware. 

Other very basic methods include:

Identifying and installing paid anti-virus software in every system that belongs to a particular network.

Before identifying an anti-virus, it helps to identify the kind of viruses your business is going to be most susceptible to. For instance, a banking networks’ security requirements or threat areas would differ from a B2B ecommerce platform. 

Always use and ensure the firewall is on to control traffic into and out of your network. By allowing only required connections, your devices will have reduced exposure to threats. 

Make use of strong passwords that are changed periodically and controlled only by the main administrator. This makes it harder to be hacked. 

End-to-end encryption like SSL or HTTP/2 ensures secure data transfer to it pays to get your website or CMS adequately equipped. 

Up-to-date software helps safeguard against fraud because every update comes with protection against one trigger or other. 

As a rule, B2Bs should check with all software vendors what their processes are with regards to data protection, security emergencies, and prevention of any vulnerabilities.

Terms every B2B Marketer should know of in this Hacking Age Hacking: When an unauthorized person or persons accesses a secure network or system by exploiting vulnerabilities in the system

Data breach: When important business data is either lost, stolen or ransomed 

Ransomware: Ransomware took the world by storm and is not a new term. It is when someone takes control of your network or data and demands a ransom to release it back to you

When it comes to Data Security, New Laws may change the way Data is Collected and used

Europe’s EU-wide privacy rules already serve as a guideline for companies doing business within Europe

The rules help align elements like access to your own shared data, right to portability, right to data deletion from record, and more

This will affect how US marketers handle data privacy issues

These regulations come in the form of GDPR and Data Protection Directive

The regulation has been described as an effort to create a “modern and harmonized data protection framework.”

In effect, this means that all global companies will have to re-examine how they collect, store, manage and deploy customer data

Malware: Malware is short for malicious software and once it hits your network or system can cause unauthorized access or damage 

Virus: Viruses are a type of malware that enters a system or computer without your knowledge to exploit your key information or cause damage to data by wiping it out or worse

The End? Automation and technology are not going to back down and with every new feature, fresh integration and important development, there are a bunch of new age threats waiting to rise from the ashes too. Identifying common vulnerabilities can greatly help businesses ensure better data protection and overall security. Maybe all of this just simply means that it is high time for businesses to spend on hiring key resources like Chief Data Security Officers, just to watch over the safety of their data – a very important element for every business. 

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

[susanhmcdade2]

PR is changing. How should health care respond?

The PR world has changed, and health care is no exception.

Razzmatazz and the hard sell no longer work-if they ever did.

The evolving PR landscape plays to health care's greatest strengths: trust and credibility. If people entrust their lives to your medical staff, pharmaceuticals or devices, you have a head start on building greater organizational trust.

In a free, downloadable guide, Dodge Communications offers strategical insight and tips for industry communicators.The Power of PR in Health Care: Building Trust, Credibility &Reputation points a way forward on matters ranging from building relationships to boosting brand awareness through influencers.

Public relations has the unmatched power to foster credibility, as well as guard and boost company reputation, the guide states. In an era of declining trust, new channels, regulatory mandates and financial pressures have prompted a shift in thinking around the traditional lines between PR, marketing and digital programs to help companies validate their positioning, increase credibility and create trustworthy relationships with customers.

The guide offers many ways to do that, among them:

Define your goals and initiatives.

From device manufacturers to payers and providers, one fundamental PR practice can benefit any organization.

Organizations must clearly define why they're pursuing PR initiatives and what they hope this effort will accomplish, the guide states.

With trust in institutions at an all-time low, people are turning to online reviews such as Healthgrades, Yelp and Angie's List before making purchasing decisions. Your job: Leverage key influencers to act as ambassadors and connect with customers.

Identify what is unique in how you serve your target customers.

When the public understands your organizational character and how the vision translates to societal benefit, they're more likely to buy your products and recommend the company.

Build relationships and credibility.

With 74 percent of consumers saying that positive reviews make them trust a business more, reaching influencers-media editors, journalists and industry analysts-is essential when pushing a company's message out, the guide states.

Find out how identifying your potential customers' sources of information can determine where you should focus your time and energy.

Find the story.

The most successful PR campaigns tell stories. Communicating a brand's message in a way that makes it appealing, compelling and impactful to customers and the media is the recipe for successful PR, allowing a brand to gain trust and media exposure, the guide states.

Harness the power of social media.

As the lines blur between social media and PR, targeting digital platforms is an increasingly important part of any publicity effort.

Businesses that are most engaged in online conversations tend to be more trusted, the guide notes.

Create confidence in your brand.

Trust is vital to business success. Find out which three attributes are essential to establishing trust.

Understanding these components that drive trust enables brands to build on it and leverage it to differentiate their products and services in a competitive market, the guide states.

Download your free guide now.

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[realselfblog]

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp

To succeed in the business of health information technology (HIT), a company has to be very clear on the problems it’s trying to address. Now that EHRs are well-adopted in physicians’ practices and hospitals, patient data have gone digital, and can be aggregated and mined for better diagnosis, treatment, and intelligent decision making. There’s surely lots of data to mine. And there are also lots of opportunities to design tools that aren’t very useful for the core problems we need to solve, for the clinicians on the front-lines trying to solve them, and for the patients and people  whom we ultimately serve.

At the end of each day, the HIT company has to remember that at the end of a digital transaction, there’s a person. That individual could be a member of a health plan, a nurse, a physician, a grandparent-caregiver tapping into her grandchild’s medical portal…all people, with different abilities to read and comprehend data, values, and incentives.

Earlier this week, I spent a day with Medecision’s digital health team, aka ‘the Liberators.’ My role in the event was to provide a through-line from introductions to trend-weaving what I heard and learned at the end of the day. In the middle of the day, I spoke about trends in health care focusing on the patient: as a payor, as im-patient, as digital, as a consumer, and as political.

As a payor, the insured patient in 2019 is likely to be managing a high-deductible health plan, responsible for first-dollar costs until s/he reaches that threshold. As such, health care spending feels like a retail event, prompting the patient-as-payor to ask, “what’s the price?” “What’s the value?” “What’s the product?” “What are the alternatives?” Even though price transparency has gone live online among more hospitals, this start-up phase is still heavy-lifting and confounding for people to understand. Health care costs continue to be the top pocketbook issue for most families in the U.S. across income cohorts.

As that payor, expecting retail service, patients are im-patient. Why can’t appointments be made online like I do with restaurants on OpenTable? What’s so hard about getting me my lab test on the day or next-day after I provide my sample? Health care surely doesn’t feel like the best retail experience, and that’s especially true for health plans. I shared the Temkin Group’s data on customer experience (shown here), where our favorites are found in grocery stores, fast food joints, and retailers. Health insurance plans? Not so much.

Patients are also digital: smartphones are fairly ubiquitous (although we must remember that not all people can afford data plans – my mantra, that connectivity and broadband are a social determinant of health). This means people (with connectivity) want work-flows for health care the way they conduct their financial affairs, social networking, travel planning, and way-finding. People are omni-channel, too, so health care must think like a retailer in reaching people wherever and however they want to be reached: online, via email, via text, phone call, and even via snail mail for some (albeit increasingly fewer) patients.

Patients are consumers, at the end of the day. As payors, digital beings, im-patient people demanding service levels they experience elsewhere — outside of healthcare.

Finally, patients are political. Health care was the top issue driving voters to the 2018 mid-term elections. Health care will also be top-of-mind among voters in 2020, who are becoming more aware of the risks of losing coverage. This week, the level of uninsured people in America rose to a four-year high, with the erosion of support for the Affordable Care Act by President Trump and Congress over the past two years. Growing concern for losing coverage for pre-existing conditions has become mainstream across political parties.

Politics underpin what’s happening in health plans in the public sector, and I spoke a bit about Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is the place to look, across the fifty State Governors, for Medicaid expansion (or not); growing integration of behavioral health to deal with depression, anxiety, and the opioid crisis; and greater attention to the social determinants of health and long term social supports (LTSS). You can see the latest Medicaid demonstration waiver data from a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis done January 9, 2019 shown in the bar chart.

To that point, during the day, two Medecision Liberators played out a scenario for complex cardio management. In the role play, a patient-persona was speaking with a call center associate. In the conversation, the plan member asked how the associate knew so much about them. Further into the conversation, the member said she needed to hurry off the call to get to her bingo game in time.

That conversation raised two important points and opportunities to drive health outcomes: first, on the issue of privacy and trust, as the member questioned just how the associate knew so much about her. That’s an opportunity to forge a bond of trust between the member and the health plan or provider, to discuss how bringing various data together can help paint a picture of her whole life and help her achieve better health.

The second item — the bingo game — presented an opportunity to discuss social supports, transportation to the event, and what the member might be snacking on during bingo. If it turns out she loves the salty snacks or M&Ms, the health coach has an opportunity to counsel the member on the impact of salt on her heart health, and suggestions for some healthier snacking.

This kind of conversation is inherent in the values that Health New England’s Lisa Holland discussed in the context of HNE’s customer promises for the organization: quality, thoughtfulness, and humanity.

The Medecision Liberators collaborated in a brainstorming exercise about social determinants of health, generating important insightful questions they would ask people about their lives to un-earth opportunities to address social supports. A few of these questions were:

What’s your most challenging daily activity?

Walk me through your typical day.

Do you have someone you can rely on if you need help?

What does living independently look like to you?

Do you have access to healthy food?

What did you do for entertainment today that gave you pleasure?

Can you read?

That led me to end the day’s trend-weaving quoting one of my favorite JAMA columns from the recent past: that Value-based payments require valuing what matters to patients, co-written by Dr. Joann Lynn, Dr. Aaron McKethan, and Dr. Ashish Jha. This has become a pillar in my thinking about the role of respect and trust in health care between patients (as payors, consumers, self-carers and caregivers) and health care organizations. They ask and answer: “How can a care system be structured to deeply respect the myriad differences among patients when disabilities or advanced age makes those differences especially important? The answer is that the delivery system must proactively help affected people articulate their priorities and goals.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The theme of trust was mentioned throughout the day, across a wide range of discussion topics. I noted in closing that this week also convened the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which Edelman annually updates their Trust Barometer. This year’s survey found that globally in 2019, the most trusted institution for consumers is the employer: both for ensuring a job for “me,” as well as for being a good corporate citizen in the community locally and in the larger world, in sustainability and responsibility.

This behavior drives trust, which we learned is the most important driver behind peoples’ engagement in health — a key finding in the first Edelman Health Engagement Barometer conducted in 2008. Eleven years later, trust as a health engagement requirement is even more important in light of our AI-enabled health care world.

We remember that at the end of every health IT transaction, there’s a person: a plan member, a consumer, a doctor, a caregiver.

“We are all the same,” a doctor’s essay in JAMA noted this week. Dr. Mandy Maneval, a family practitioner in Mifflintown, PA, wrote:

It strikes me that so many of life’s moments are dichotomies of health and disease, life and death, joy and sorrow. As a family medicine physician, this mirrors my everyday life. I often leave one patient’s room after giving bad news and immediately enter the next room to see the happy parents of a newborn. Navigating the full spectrum of human emotion is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. There are days when I feel like a hero and others when I cannot do a thing right…Connecting deeply through our shared humanity, no matter our differences, is one of the most precious gifts we offer and receive as physicians. We are all the same.

That works for physicians, and it works for all of us in the health care ecosystem. I thank Medecision for the opportunity to participate in this day of insights, team-building, and real human connection.

That last sentence was going to be the conclusion of this post. But just in time, on cue as this post was being scheduled on WordPress, an article titled A Framework for Increasing Trust Between Patients and the Organizations That Care for Them arrived in my inbox from JAMA published on 24th January 2019. Dr. Thomas Lee and colleagues explained:

Trust matters in health care. It makes patients feel less vulnerable, clinicians feel more effective, and reduces the imbalances of information by improving the flow of information. Trust is so fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that it is easy to assume it exists. But because of changes in health care and society at large, trust is increasingly understood to be at risk and in need of attention.

The authors outline potential approaches to increase trust between patients and health care organizations, which include:

As a first step, leadership should acknowledge that trust is foundational and a trusting environment essential for good health care

Measuring trust should be a standard part of evaluating patient care experiences, including those with health plans

Transparency of patient care experiences should be part of measuring, monitoring and continually improving quality and safety

Boards and leadership should routinely examine data that reflect on patient and staff trust, and include these in reward plans

Standards, training and accountability systems should be developed for clinicians and for teams

Relationships between patients and clinicians should be structured such that patients can make choices reflecting their personal preferences: this recognizes that patients know more about what matters to them and how they are doing

Health systems should insure needs of patients for a navigator or translator are met

Finally, patients should be actively engaged in designing solutions to the erosion of trust.

This article is free from JAMA’s usual paywall, so please click on the link above to access the entire discussion. These doctors who crowdsourced the recommendations really understand that it’s good to know about patient’s love of bingo, taste for salty snacks, and social support systems…and patients really do want to be part of their own planning and care.

The post The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp posted first on http://dentistfortworth.blogspot.com

[realselfblog]

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp

To succeed in the business of health information technology (HIT), a company has to be very clear on the problems it’s trying to address. Now that EHRs are well-adopted in physicians’ practices and hospitals, patient data have gone digital, and can be aggregated and mined for better diagnosis, treatment, and intelligent decision making. There’s surely lots of data to mine. And there are also lots of opportunities to design tools that aren’t very useful for the core problems we need to solve, for the clinicians on the front-lines trying to solve them, and for the patients and people  whom we ultimately serve.

At the end of each day, the HIT company has to remember that at the end of a digital transaction, there’s a person. That individual could be a member of a health plan, a nurse, a physician, a grandparent-caregiver tapping into her grandchild’s medical portal…all people, with different abilities to read and comprehend data, values, and incentives.

Earlier this week, I spent a day with Medecision’s digital health team, aka ‘the Liberators.’ My role in the event was to provide a through-line from introductions to trend-weaving what I heard and learned at the end of the day. In the middle of the day, I spoke about trends in health care focusing on the patient: as a payor, as im-patient, as digital, as a consumer, and as political.

As a payor, the insured patient in 2019 is likely to be managing a high-deductible health plan, responsible for first-dollar costs until s/he reaches that threshold. As such, health care spending feels like a retail event, prompting the patient-as-payor to ask, “what’s the price?” “What’s the value?” “What’s the product?” “What are the alternatives?” Even though price transparency has gone live online among more hospitals, this start-up phase is still heavy-lifting and confounding for people to understand. Health care costs continue to be the top pocketbook issue for most families in the U.S. across income cohorts.

As that payor, expecting retail service, patients are im-patient. Why can’t appointments be made online like I do with restaurants on OpenTable? What’s so hard about getting me my lab test on the day or next-day after I provide my sample? Health care surely doesn’t feel like the best retail experience, and that’s especially true for health plans. I shared the Temkin Group’s data on customer experience (shown here), where our favorites are found in grocery stores, fast food joints, and retailers. Health insurance plans? Not so much.

Patients are also digital: smartphones are fairly ubiquitous (although we must remember that not all people can afford data plans – my mantra, that connectivity and broadband are a social determinant of health). This means people (with connectivity) want work-flows for health care the way they conduct their financial affairs, social networking, travel planning, and way-finding. People are omni-channel, too, so health care must think like a retailer in reaching people wherever and however they want to be reached: online, via email, via text, phone call, and even via snail mail for some (albeit increasingly fewer) patients.

Patients are consumers, at the end of the day. As payors, digital beings, im-patient people demanding service levels they experience elsewhere — outside of healthcare.

Finally, patients are political. Health care was the top issue driving voters to the 2018 mid-term elections. Health care will also be top-of-mind among voters in 2020, who are becoming more aware of the risks of losing coverage. This week, the level of uninsured people in America rose to a four-year high, with the erosion of support for the Affordable Care Act by President Trump and Congress over the past two years. Growing concern for losing coverage for pre-existing conditions has become mainstream across political parties.

Politics underpin what’s happening in health plans in the public sector, and I spoke a bit about Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is the place to look, across the fifty State Governors, for Medicaid expansion (or not); growing integration of behavioral health to deal with depression, anxiety, and the opioid crisis; and greater attention to the social determinants of health and long term social supports (LTSS). You can see the latest Medicaid demonstration waiver data from a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis done January 9, 2019 shown in the bar chart.

To that point, during the day, two Medecision Liberators played out a scenario for complex cardio management. In the role play, a patient-persona was speaking with a call center associate. In the conversation, the plan member asked how the associate knew so much about them. Further into the conversation, the member said she needed to hurry off the call to get to her bingo game in time.

That conversation raised two important points and opportunities to drive health outcomes: first, on the issue of privacy and trust, as the member questioned just how the associate knew so much about her. That’s an opportunity to forge a bond of trust between the member and the health plan or provider, to discuss how bringing various data together can help paint a picture of her whole life and help her achieve better health.

The second item — the bingo game — presented an opportunity to discuss social supports, transportation to the event, and what the member might be snacking on during bingo. If it turns out she loves the salty snacks or M&Ms, the health coach has an opportunity to counsel the member on the impact of salt on her heart health, and suggestions for some healthier snacking.

This kind of conversation is inherent in the values that Health New England’s Lisa Holland discussed in the context of HNE’s customer promises for the organization: quality, thoughtfulness, and humanity.

The Medecision Liberators collaborated in a brainstorming exercise about social determinants of health, generating important insightful questions they would ask people about their lives to un-earth opportunities to address social supports. A few of these questions were:

What’s your most challenging daily activity?

Walk me through your typical day.

Do you have someone you can rely on if you need help?

What does living independently look like to you?

Do you have access to healthy food?

What did you do for entertainment today that gave you pleasure?

Can you read?

That led me to end the day’s trend-weaving quoting one of my favorite JAMA columns from the recent past: that Value-based payments require valuing what matters to patients, co-written by Dr. Joann Lynn, Dr. Aaron McKethan, and Dr. Ashish Jha. This has become a pillar in my thinking about the role of respect and trust in health care between patients (as payors, consumers, self-carers and caregivers) and health care organizations. They ask and answer: “How can a care system be structured to deeply respect the myriad differences among patients when disabilities or advanced age makes those differences especially important? The answer is that the delivery system must proactively help affected people articulate their priorities and goals.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The theme of trust was mentioned throughout the day, across a wide range of discussion topics. I noted in closing that this week also convened the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which Edelman annually updates their Trust Barometer. This year’s survey found that globally in 2019, the most trusted institution for consumers is the employer: both for ensuring a job for “me,” as well as for being a good corporate citizen in the community locally and in the larger world, in sustainability and responsibility.

This behavior drives trust, which we learned is the most important driver behind peoples’ engagement in health — a key finding in the first Edelman Health Engagement Barometer conducted in 2008. Eleven years later, trust as a health engagement requirement is even more important in light of our AI-enabled health care world.

We remember that at the end of every health IT transaction, there’s a person: a plan member, a consumer, a doctor, a caregiver.

“We are all the same,” a doctor’s essay in JAMA noted this week. Dr. Mandy Maneval, a family practitioner in Mifflintown, PA, wrote:

It strikes me that so many of life’s moments are dichotomies of health and disease, life and death, joy and sorrow. As a family medicine physician, this mirrors my everyday life. I often leave one patient’s room after giving bad news and immediately enter the next room to see the happy parents of a newborn. Navigating the full spectrum of human emotion is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. There are days when I feel like a hero and others when I cannot do a thing right…Connecting deeply through our shared humanity, no matter our differences, is one of the most precious gifts we offer and receive as physicians. We are all the same.

That works for physicians, and it works for all of us in the health care ecosystem. I thank Medecision for the opportunity to participate in this day of insights, team-building, and real human connection.

That last sentence was going to be the conclusion of this post. But just in time, on cue as this post was being scheduled on WordPress, an article titled A Framework for Increasing Trust Between Patients and the Organizations That Care for Them arrived in my inbox from JAMA published on 24th January 2019. Dr. Thomas Lee and colleagues explained:

Trust matters in health care. It makes patients feel less vulnerable, clinicians feel more effective, and reduces the imbalances of information by improving the flow of information. Trust is so fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that it is easy to assume it exists. But because of changes in health care and society at large, trust is increasingly understood to be at risk and in need of attention.

The authors outline potential approaches to increase trust between patients and health care organizations, which include:

As a first step, leadership should acknowledge that trust is foundational and a trusting environment essential for good health care

Measuring trust should be a standard part of evaluating patient care experiences, including those with health plans

Transparency of patient care experiences should be part of measuring, monitoring and continually improving quality and safety

Boards and leadership should routinely examine data that reflect on patient and staff trust, and include these in reward plans

Standards, training and accountability systems should be developed for clinicians and for teams

Relationships between patients and clinicians should be structured such that patients can make choices reflecting their personal preferences: this recognizes that patients know more about what matters to them and how they are doing

Health systems should insure needs of patients for a navigator or translator are met

Finally, patients should be actively engaged in designing solutions to the erosion of trust.

This article is free from JAMA’s usual paywall, so please click on the link above to access the entire discussion. These doctors who crowdsourced the recommendations really understand that it’s good to know about patient’s love of bingo, taste for salty snacks, and social support systems…and patients really do want to be part of their own planning and care.

The post The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp posted first on http://dentistfortworth.blogspot.com