"Digital transformation is very urgent for Missioncare. Our future development is not in scale, but in thinking about how to develop our core competitiveness, that is, the ability to integrate resources in different areas, in order to introduce the new economic model into the healthcare industry." Hung-Jen Yang, the CEO of Misssioncare Medicine, believes that in order to achieve a precise health ecosystem, digital transformation is imperative, and he has greater goals. He hopes to establish a standard model for the digitalization of the healthcare industry, which will not only establish more competitiveness but also create more impact.
Information and communications technology is an important key to transformation and upgrading
Missioncare Medicine started as a 17-bed surgical hospital 45 years ago. After scale expansion and enterprise transformation, “hospitals” was the main development goal in the early stage. It has always been a regional hospital that residents of Taoyuan rely on. Since it has developed from the community, it is more concerned about primary medical care. In recent years, under the trend of aging society and people's health awareness has gradually increased, Missioncare Medicine has extended their scope of services to chronic disease medical treatment, long-term care, preventive medicine and other services.
"If we limit ourselves to hospital operations, the business scope would be too narrow. We are very aware of the overall continuity of medicine and healthcare. Although we started with just medical treatment, we found that the existing system and market conditions were insufficient, and we began to look at it from a human perspective. Connecting all the resources we have, so in the past five years, there was mergers and acquisitions of YES Chain Pharmacy and Taipei Harvard Checkup Center and Clinic." Hung-Jen Yang explained his intention of building a large health ecosystem. Therefore, in recent years, he has worked harder to lay out and integrate health care from preventive medicine to long term care, comprehensive services for everyone.
Information and communications technology is an important key to transformation and upgrading
YES Pharmacy cooperated with Institute for Information Industry for empirical testing of innovative IoT products for "Enterprises-Smart Health Care Category". Through Institute for Information Industry, a large number of cross-domain IoT product services with related solutions are called for. YES chain pharmacy provides space and users. Through user experience feedback, products and services will be more mature and optimized, and the future Commercial development can be closer to perfect.
In addition, Institute for Information Industry also provided the "Cross-device data return system" and through a series of interactive processes such as recruitment, selection, and introduction at Missioncare. At this stage, the data connection of a variety of cross-brand home health care networking devices has been completed, including physiological data measurement devices, cognitive interactive evaluation devices for preventing dementia, at home safety tracking devices, location tracking and muscle strength/softness detection devices, etc., in the future, through the IDEAS Chain platform developed by Institute of Information Industry, even if users change their devices, Personal data can also be retrieved, which is a complete personal data tracking management service, which also enables the pharmacy to learn about the needs of people in the local community more accurately.
In fact, YES Chain Pharmacy also has other missions. First of all, last year, in cooperation with Institute of Information Industry, Smart Pharmacy No. 1 store was opened in the Minsheng Community, followed by the No. 2 store will be right across the street from Mackay Hospital in Taipei this year. They hope that more information and communication can be used to serve customers from the local community in the future more accurately.
The first aspect is to let pharmacists of the community pharmacy get more personalized health advice and care using digital information to become more familiar with customers.
The second aspect is to make smart pharmacies also work as locations for long-term care, and cooperate with the "New Life Alliance" of Institute for Information Industry. These long-term locations will be called "New Gathering Points," so that these new pharmacies have more than counters and shelves. Therefore, in the second Smart Pharmacy, you can see that one-third of the space is vacated and become a social gathering space for the local community. If the community uses this space to hold activities, it will have the opportunity to synchronize resources related to health care. And can lead elders in the local community to do muscle or brain power tests, expanding the service scope of the pharmacy.
Step out of the hospital through strategic cooperation
"A classic example is that old traditional convenience stores in the streets transformed into modern convenience stores, and these stores can do everything. If the pharmacy is still a traditional pharmacy, it would be a pity, so we hope that we can use the resources from Institute for Information Industry to empower the traditional pharmacies to take care of the community.” Hung-Jen Yang believes that pharmacies should become the center of community health care and take on this responsibility. This is also the main reason for cooperating with Institute for Information Industry.
After all, the service process of Smart Pharmacy has been different from the past. What kind of product or service is most suitable for the community is not a field familiar to the medical industry. A partner is required to do pre-research, survey, planning and design, and provide professional Suggestions.
Hung-Jen Yang said with enthusiasm, "The medical profession often has a professional limitation. It feels like it is always patients come to doctors and doctors go out to recruit patients for marketing. Traditional concept like this is out of style. So we talk about the integration of medicine and technology, or medical technology... …These future applications seem to have invested a lot, but nothing has happened. I think the main reason lies in the closeness, rigidity and limitation of the hospital. Only by breaking through these can it truly be activated."
In order to accelerate the stimulation, Missioncare began to promote the interaction between the hospital and the pharmacy. Through the mutual visits of doctors and pharmacists, they tried to integrate internally in the most efficient way, and go on Facebook live, using informational communication as a tool to share hospitals Resources and gradually formed it into a mechanism. Hung-Jen Yang said that it seems effective at the moment, and it also shows that digital transformation must be implemented with correct strategies and methods. In order to accelerate the promotion, Missincare established "Digimed Co., Ltd." in August 2020. This is a pioneer that leads the the enterprise to promote the integration of medicine and electronics and achieve digital transformation.
Leading transformation tasks with Specialized troops should lead these missions
If the pharmacy is an outpost for the digital transformation, "Digimed Co., Ltd." is a pioneer. They undertake the task of opening the door of medicine and digital, and are responsible for introducing cross-border resources. Wei-Kuang Ho, the CEO of Digimed, pointed out that “the goal is huge and there are many little subgoals, but we will start from the front-end application services.” He also said that the front-end is not cutting-edge technology, but the actual application of the daily work of the personnel and customers in the system. "There is a large space and demand. If existing systems and mechanisms can be combined with information and communication, it can produce a multiplier effect. For example, pharmacies, hospitals, health checkup centers, and e-commerce; their systems must be able to interact, and in order to achieve that, the resources within the system must be connected to each other, and it requires information and communication to do that. If the connection is successful, it is believed that the service quality and market scope will increase, and ultimately it will be reflected in operating income." It is the goal at this stage.
The future of Digimed Co., Ltd. is full of imagination. Wei-Kuang Ho said that "the biggest challenge is to not know how many challenges there are in the future." However, in just 4 months, Digimed Co., Ltd. has been exposed to more than 30 cases, and at least one third of them have been assessed to be executable. Some are integrated with various departments at the hospital, some can be introduced into the hospital process; others are projects that can cooperated with pharmacies or health check-up centers.
The transformation and change of physique cannot be accomplished overnight. The establishment of this new company is one of Hung-Jen Yang’s strategies. After all, "The enterprise has complicated business, and with the bureaucracy, digital transformation is not easy to promote from within. In addition, the establishment of Digimed Co., Ltd. is the first step, so that they can break away from the enterprise, directly authorize support, which can lead to a better result. If the information and communication professionals directly enter the enterprise, they may retreat soon. The reason is because the old problems alone are still waiting to be resolved; they may have to face some internal rebound and pressure.” Therefore, after several discussions with Wei-Kuang Ho, he believed that the establishment of a new company is the best way. Internally, it is a digital transformation center. Externally, it can be separated from the medical thinking and integrate more resources with a real business model.
Have a successful mentality and methods, and expect to build a model for itself
In the past few years, the government has been actively promoting "precision health, medical ecosystem", but " health ecosystem" has long existed in the blueprint of the Missioncare, and in the process of promoting the digital transformation of medicine, Hung-Jen Yang and his team thinks about the characteristics of Missioncare from time to time, they found out that the business scale of Missioncare is moderate and flexible enough; with the investment of resources, Missioncare is very suitable to be the pioneer in the digital transformation of medical industry. It allows the system to advance with time, and even leading the trend, establishing models and standards that can be followed.
Whenever Hung-Jen Yang thinks about this, he feels that he is duty-bound. To be successful, it requires a positive attitude and effective methods. He believes that introducing experts and professionals is the only way, and cooperating with Institute for Information Industry is the best way to introduce to cross-border resources.
