With 16+ million recorded cases, half a million deaths and most importantly spreading across almost every single country in the world, COVID-19 pandemic shut down the entire planet within a few months after its very first identified case. According to BBC, more than 100 countries were fully or partially locked down by the end of March 2020 and New York Times records that at least 93% of the world population resides in countries with travel restrictions.

The global and changing environment around us requires organizations to respond to changes effectively and efficiently. Now the question is how healthcare transformation can address this challenge.

We have seen some major issues arising, that requires the systems’ readiness to resolve and take the best action –

  1. How to cope with a highly contagious virus with minimal human interactions
  2. How to have efficient communication between healthcare workers and patients
  3. How to use the existing resources to build a complex system to manage the situation without having to wait for months
  4. How to update the systems easily and rapidly with new findings because it is a newly identified virus, the initial knowledge was limited
  5. How to determine the next best action in healthcare that minimizes false positive and true negative outcomes

The objective and priority of any healthcare transformation is to enable both providers and payers to address the above issues.

We are already witnessing the second or third wave across the globe. It’s evident that no matter how advanced we are in telemedicine, there is a large gap that needs to be filled with a successful healthcare transformation that can handle situations like COVID-19 pandemic by triaging efficiently, alerting carers immediately, and taking quality decisions (optimized, patients-centric, and situation-aware) at early stages.

How will Next Best Action Decisioning Capability Enable Healthcare Transformation

The use of the next best action in healthcare enables direct input from patients, carers, and health professionals. Then based on the history and the provided answers, will determine the required next actions that are aligned with the required outcomes.

Healthcare transformation using next-best-action decision

A model allows value-based healthcare using end-to-end decision automation.


Healthcare transformation should be aligned with value based healthcare requires end-to-end decision automation and reaping the benefits of the next best action.

The following video demonstrates simplifying complex healthcare decision-making with end-to-end decision automation. From one end, the patient enters the symptoms along with their indicators (e.g. Current temperature in Celsius), on the other end, the carers will receive an alert (e.g. Call/ text the patient within 1 hour). In between, the system handles the business rules examining how critical the symptoms are, determining which alerts to be sent to the doctors and carers.

For example, if a patient records body temperature more than 39°C, chest pain, and continuous cough, a carer should receive an alert asking to contact the patient within 1 hour which is the next best action.

There are a number of benefits with this solution:

  1. Most importantly, there is no initial human interaction making it safe to be used by healthcare professionals and caregivers who wants to have an initial check-up in a situation like contagious COVID-19
  2. Minimizes the time it takes for each patient as they can use the system from a device rather than talking to a person
  3. Provides high accuracy in patient diagnosis and treatment by reducing human errors

Conclusion – Next Best Action Decisioning in Healthcare is Critical

We have been hearing about methods to stop the spread, upcoming cures, and vaccine trials. However, the experts predict that situations like COVID-19 are going to be the next normal. Therefore, we all have to think ahead and plan our future strategies to face unexpected situations globally with a better healthcare transformation that empowers providers and caregivers with Next Best Action through a more intelligent, Decision-Centric Approach® such as End-to-End Decision Automation.

Last updated February 10th, 2023 at 08:54 am, Published July 30th, 2020 at 08:54 am