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Perspectives

Hybrid consulting solutions in health care

Applied insights, actionable information, and holistic value

Health care providers, life sciences companies, and other industry stakeholders often need help to define metrics, create tools, and implement processes that put actionable clinical and business information in decision makers’ hands.

Elements of a hybrid consulting/product solution

The recent and prolific increase in health care data makes it (theoretically) possible for industry stakeholders–providers, life sciences companies, and others–to generate analytics that can help solve “heart-of-the-business” problems, such as driving performance improvement, managing patient populations, optimizing physician networks, applying real-world evidence (RWE), and enhancing R&D productivity. Yet, just as it takes the right combination of people, processes, and technology to convert raw oil into gasoline to power car engines, it takes the right combination of people, processes, and technology to convert raw health care data into actionable information to power clinical and business decision making.

Typical solution choices of an off-the-shelf software package or one-off consulting engagement are not always the right answer. Certain types of business problems require a hybrid approach that integrates specialized and transformative business consulting services with software, data, and analytics resulting in a solution that may be more effective than pure technology or services alone.

In short, a hybrid product solution does not just automate an existing process or function; it empowers organizations to:

  • Drive changes in fundamental business operations
  • Execute workflow faster and better
  • Reach better decisions by focusing energy on the core business challenge
  • Increase solution efficacy, repeatability/transferability, and ease-of-use through the synergy of consulting and technology
  • Select from among several business model options: outsourced to a managed services firm, cloud/subscription model, or internally managed
  • Extend a solution’s value beyond the initial service engagement

This article defines the elements of a hybrid consulting/product solution, identifies health care-driven business problems that may be candidates for a hybrid solution, explores hybrid solutions’ value proposition, and shares examples of health care hybrid solutions in action.

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