The prognosis for healthcare commerce — Gartner® HCLS Total Experience: Driving Engagement for Business Results in Healthcare and Life Science

The Gartner® HCLS Total Experience: Driving Engagement for Business Results in Healthcare and Life Science makes a compelling case for a Total Experience (TX) strategy. After all, this approach  “enables seamless experiences for consumers, partners and employees with an intuitive user experience (UX) across multiple platforms, touchpoints and journeys throughout the HCLS industry.” 

The analyst firm showcases how CIOs can create a strategy that transcends current metrics, embraces industry trends and adopts new ways of working, powered by “technology to drive engagement and improve experience.” In this article, we provide an overview of why a composable commerce approach powered by commercetools enables the HCLS industry to embrace Total Experiences across the board. 

“Consumer experience continues to be a priority for most healthcare and life science (HCLS) organizations, but maturity remains low,” is the starting point of the thought leadership research aimed at CIOs in the health industry. Moreover, the report highlights that “HCLS total experience (HCLS TX) efforts remain siloed and focused often on regulatory measures or lagging indicators.” 

According to the report, HCLS TX requires engaging or collaborating “with stakeholders (internal and external) to achieve a goal or outcome that is meaningful and relevant to them, no matter where they sit in the ecosystem.” In essence, this holistic approach unifies consumer, employee, user and partner experiences under the HCLS Total Experience umbrella. 

Because consumers (as well as employees and partners) expect experiences to be primarily digital — from buying a femtech product online to using telehealth — enabling “seamless experiences for consumers, partners, and employees” is more critical than ever. However, while the industry faces various barriers, such as continued workforce shortages and regulatory uncertainty, a fragmented ecosystem remains one of the primary challenges.

“Eliminating application and data silos to improve experiences and ecosystem connectivity” is vital to create “a seamless UX for consumers, employees and partners,” states the report. To address this issue, an increasing number of HCLS companies are turning to composable commerce powered by commercetools for Healthcare to achieve seamless system interoperability and data exchange while safeguarding sensitive and protected health data. 

The API-first nature of composable commerce is pivotal for healthcare organizations aiming to eliminate silos and achieve system interoperability. Our experience shows that, by prioritizing APIs from the outset, healthcare providers can seamlessly integrate various software applications and platforms, ensuring that data flows smoothly across different systems. This approach facilitates real-time data sharing and communication between disparate systems, reducing the risk of data duplication and inconsistencies. 

For instance, the leading manufacturer and distributor in the oral surgery space, ACE Southern, embraced the API-first approach of composable commerce to manage and exchange data seamlessly across various applications. The company can now create a better experience that’s seeing a 2.5 times increase in returns on the average order value in comparison to the legacy system they had previously. According to Matt Swan, product technical manager at ACE Southern, “We’ve offloaded all that complexity to commercetools. Everything is an API now.” 

In a nutshell, healthcare organizations that aim at driving engagement and improving the experience for consumers and employees alike should consider moving away from legacy systems as a way to free the data flow amongst systems and achieve much-needed interoperability. As the report states, “Interoperability is foundational in HCLS TX, to access data and position data to refine experience.”

We believe that, by adopting a composable approach and, as a result, enabling data and system interoperability, the HCLS industry can also unlock personalization, which the report considers “a foundational capability necessary to transform total experience.” 

While composable technology empowers healthcare businesses to create outstanding customer experiences, we hold the view that its impact of composable transcends customer experiences and impacts the people side of an organization. As recognized by multiple businesses we work with, healthcare and otherwise, composable technology comes with a “composable organization,” in which a company’s architecture mirrors its team structure, so teams can work independently and deliver change quickly. In other words, HCLS businesses can apply the core principles of composability — flexibility, autonomy, agility — both to technology and team structure. 

For instance, the molecular diagnostic company, Cepheid, realized that driving digital transformation with composable meant more than focusing on technology. “Rapid digital transformation is really made possible with a combination of people, process and strategy. But, it's really a journey of continuous improvement. We’re constantly innovating to meet and exceed customer expectations,” said Amelita Ebuña, Director of eCommerce at Cepheid.  

While the report acknowledges that “Maturing HCLS TX will take time,” it urges CIOs in HCLS organizations “to build and expand on siloed experience efforts, and embrace a new level of internal and external collaboration.” Beyond engaging “with C-suite peers and cross-functional stakeholders to ensure HCLS TX is a focus and to develop a comprehensive strategy,” Gartner also recommends the industry to embrace and define “experience-focused OKRs and KPIs” and “increase investments in personalization.” 

This research is one in an eight-part series covering business and technology directions indicating the vision of intelligent health in healthcare and life science. Download the full report, Gartner® HCLS Total Experience: Driving Engagement for Business Results in Healthcare and Life Science, to explore all key findings, recommendations and next steps to transform HCLS TX. 

Gartner, HCLS Total Experience: Driving Engagement for Business Results in Healthcare and Life Science, Faith Adams, Connie Salgy, Et Al. 6 March 2024.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.