If you want to understand where the future of medicine is going, first you must understand where it has been.

Until recently, doctors didn’t have a lot of medicine or tools. Before the 1850’s, there was no radiology, no penicillin, and no antibiotics. In most cases, doctors didn’t have a deep  understanding of what even caused disease. Before the industrialization of medicine, the doctor’s role was not to cure the patient as much, but to ease their suffering and offer as much healing as was possible at the time.

Then starting in the 1850’s, doctors began to understand science and biology and develop the tools and processes to really have an impact. From these beginnings have come an influx of incredible life-saving tools, such as x-rays, penicillin, CAT scans, and much safer surgeries. This era begat a huge focus on technology and improvements in medicine, diagnostics, and procedures.

While medicine was rapidly advancing, information management stayed primitive and paper-only. Additionally, the focus on the patient relationship fell by the wayside and relationships outside of the exam room were essentially non-existent.

Now we’re seeing the next-generation of the doctor-patient relationship. When I worked as a physician there were always some patients that needed close contact, but for most people you said, “Here’s your prescription. Good luck, come back in two months.” If they came back, the relationship would continue.  If they never came back, we might never know what happened. I had no idea what my patients did when they left. Now we all know this way of practice doesn’t work and costs and outcomes research show the dire effects of this approach. Accordingly, regulations and reimbursement have had a real effect on evolving practice back to the old-fashioned style of close contact and support; and, technology is making it possible for doctors and other providers to know their patients better than ever.

The old model of healthcare is sort of analogous to your car mechanic — if your car needs a repair due to an accident, the mechanic fixes it and the insurance company pays for it. The business and operational sides of healthcare used to treat patients like the car — we were objects for the hospitals to make money, for doctors to make decisions about our health, and for the insurance companies to pay. While most individuals within healthcare of course cared, and some institutions practiced a high touch style, the vast majority ended contact upon discharge. And patient certainly weren’t active agents. That’s changing; now there’s increased focus on the patient themselves — appropriately so.

The industry is shifting toward what’s important: taking care of people preventatively, not just when they’re sick, and taking care of them when they’re sick by addressing their mental health, the logistics of their lives, and their support systems. This includes tracking their health after they leave the doctor’s office or hospital. Technology has finally caught up in a way that allows doctors to care for and follow-up with their patients outside the four walls of a hospital.

This care model is not only altruistic; it’s obviously far cheaper and more effective to preserve health than to cure the sick. Healthcare providers are tapping into technology such as Salesforce Health Cloud to deliver more personalized, targeted care to each patient.

Launching Health Cloud wasn’t an easy journey. With healthcare in particular it’s crucial to take a conservative approach. In Silicon Valley the entire ethos is to release early and release often. Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. Don’t be afraid for your startup to go out of business. You’ll learn in the process and pivot.

You can’t do that in healthcare, because lives are at stake. So we needed to be cautious and not just jump into building a product without 100% commitment to its success across the company. That’s part of the DNA of Salesforce — we don’t just build a product, ship it, and say, “See you later.” We stand by our investments and continue to grow them by being responsive to our customers and continually adding new features and capabilities.

That’s the true key to innovation. You must stay in lockstep with your customers — that’s how Salesforce has been able to grow from an idea hatched by Marc Benioff and Parker Harris. The customers said, “Now that I’ve got sales automation, I need service. Now I need marketing; I need communities; I need analytics.” We built those things and completely transformed the company by paying attention to our customers.

As Health Cloud evolves, we will continue to stay close to our customers because it’s imperative to evolving the product. Patients deserve to be more active agents in their healthcare and they deserve more personalized interactions with their doctors and providers, and with Health Cloud we are on the cutting edge of making the future a reality for patients around the world.  

Joshua Newman, MD MSHS, is the Chief Medical Officer and GM, Healthcare and Life Sciences at Salesforce.

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