Summary

This chapter was an introduction to this book. We set our challenge for the transformation. We introduced the TiSH staircase with the seven treads of transformation. We studied the various inputs that will drive the transformation of healthcare. We learned that drivers come from major global trends. Demographic trends such as the aging population and scarcity of skilled staff cause and increase the upward pressure on global healthcare systems. Next, we studied how precision diagnosis, precision medicine, and lifestyle are proven methods to drive costs of healthcare down and, at the same time, help to improve the quality of life of patients.

The most important lesson that we learned in this chapter is that the transformation of healthcare must be about the patient. This is something that requires a common understanding between all stakeholders and an understanding of TEC. In the final sections, we introduced the architecture of healthcare systems, using enterprise architecture methodologies such as TOGAF, the RA4H, and the community for INCA as a reference to digitization, medicine, and health itself. We can use these models to collect the jointly understood requirements for changing healthcare, but always with the patient as the center of the architectural and community models that we use.

In this chapter, we also introduced HeX: the healthcare experience, showing how care really can be organized from the patient’s perspective, with scalable, even disruptive solutions. It forms a further introduction to this book in which we will study new models and agile ways of working to transform healthcare into a more sustainable system. It forms the introduction to DevOps4Care.

In the next chapter, we will explore the major emerging technology trends in healthcare.