How live services can unlock value in healthcare

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This blog is part of a series focused on ‘making innovation happen in healthcare’. They’re written by Opencast leaders and our health-experienced consultants.

If a healthcare digital service is ‘live’, it can be tempting to see it as ‘done’, which can impede the ability of the team to make data-driven improvements to the user experience.

Cost pressures, changes in policy, and competing technical updates can mean that feature updates are postponed or de-prioritised.

But live services often have more potential than we realise. If a service is ‘live’, it is often seen as ‘done’. By encouraging the service team to adopt a continuous improvement mindset, we can deliver value faster, reduce inefficiencies, and respond to emerging user needs.

Teams can utilise their access to real-time feedback and performance data to prioritise improvements based on evidence, make more cost-effective decisions that enhance the service, without the delay or disruption of a full rebuild.

Deliver value quickly

Continuous improvement of live services is about more than bug fixes and addressing technical debt. It should also focus on testing changes and enhancements to the existing service, allowing the team to deliver value at pace.

The key is prioritising changes that can be delivered quickly and tested with real users, realising value in weeks instead of months or years.

For example, a small and quick change we made to the content on the login page of an NHS service, based off existing research by another NHS team, saw a 6% increase in patients signing in with their NHS account.

When working on a live and stable service, the team can plan out small improvements and prioritise those based on incoming blockers and dependencies.

As the service is live, there are often assurances and policies already in place that will support what the team is doing and allow them to implement and learn from the change at pace.

Act on emerging needs and data

Teams working on live services have a unique opportunity to utilise incoming user feedback and data to embed responsiveness into the service and their ways of working.

Through real-time data and feedback loops, teams can engage with users and make decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions. This strengthens trust in the system.

Increase efficiencies and reduce costs

By shifting away from established ways of working, a team has the freedom to envision and create iterations to the product or service, which can lead to significant cost savings and end-user satisfaction.

Traditionally, starting from Discovery often means redoing work that already exists, such as architecture, integrations, clinical safety assessments, assurance, and onboarding. This can result in long delivery times, unforeseen costs, and resistance to iterating on existing processes. These issues can persist up until a service is handed over to live. Instead, healthcare teams should have the freedom to focus on improving an existing service, identifying what’s already been invested in, avoiding duplication and maximising reusability.

One example saw a delivery team modify an existing service through a digital- first approach to communications. Rather than contacting patients via traditional letters, they advocated for testing digital communications via email and SMS. The improvement resulted in faster and increased response rates and a reduction in service running costs due to the decreased need to send letters.

Colour photo of man sitting with doctor taking his blood pressure

Create a culture of improvement

Just because a service is live doesn’t mean the work is done. A live service allows teams to start innovating and improving the patient experience from the get-go. Teams can hear directly from users interacting with it in real time, they can address any emerging pain points before they become embedded and reuse existing relationships and assurances to support them to deliver at pace.

A way service teams can do this is by making time to step back and look at the wider patient and staff experience. By scheduling end-to-end reviews, they can identify multiple areas where they can test and implement potential improvements. This activity also promotes a culture of continuous improvement by asking team members to always focus on what could be improved in the short, medium, and long term. In one NHS service, a detailed review resulted in the creation of 30 actionable items brought into the current workflow.

This shift in mindset allows us to increase the long-term effectiveness of healthcare services and unlock value in a service that has been previously overlooked. It can also help keep services relevant for their users, or help organisations decide to close them if they no longer meet user needs.

Want to talk to us about a similar challenge you’re having and how we might be able to help? Reach out to Laurna.robertson@opencastsoftware.com and we’ll schedule some time to chat.

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