How Innovation Can Pave Way For Customer Satisfaction in The Healthcare Industry Continuous innovation in healthcare has given us lifesaving medical drugs and devices over decades and the cycle continues to evolve.

"Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities." – Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO, Amazon

Constant innovation is one of the basic requirements for the success of any business – small or big.It is also one of the key ingredients for customer satisfaction. According to recent research, about 75% of companies underlined improving customer experience as one of their top priorities. In today's competitive world, there are no extra marks for business as usual. Working products and good customer experience are the prerequisites of customer satisfaction. In this age of digitization and social media, customers have become more demanding for personalized services and greater care. Many of them base their purchase decisions on how innovative products are -- price and quality notwithstanding. Healthcare is no different. Affecting the lives and health of the people, healthcare must be even more responsive to customers and their increasing needs, innovating itself for the betterment of mankind.

Continuous innovation in healthcare has given us lifesaving medical drugs and devices over decades and the cycle continues to evolve. Healthcare devices are witnessing an interesting paradigm shift from once being monolithic and huge ones operated only by experts to now being transformed into handheld portable consumer devices. Consumers need affordability, accuracy, portability, and design, all packed into one product. They need the user interface to be simpler than the simplest and are least interested in complex algorithms and processes running in the background. The magic of Einstein's theory of relativity probably is less in its mathematical derivation and more in giving the world the simplest formula ever, which is E=mc2.

Integrating Innovation And User Experience

The user journey does not end with the purchase of the product. It rather starts from there. Importance of an awesome user experience in terms of personalization, customization, privacy, automation, support, and feedback is what distinguishes winners from losers. Technology and its correct implementation to flawlessly executing the entire workflow of user engagement hold the key to customer satisfaction. An innovation that addresses these aspects will bring in happy customers – customers who will place their trust in the business in the longer term as well.

The aim of any business should not always be only to solve the problem at hand – it makes no sense to serve old wine in a new bottle. The starting point for innovation should be an analysis of customer needs and trends. The outcome of which should be giving customers a product that they have subconsciously desired. This is also known as creating behavioural change.

For example, Self-Monitoring Blood Glucose (SMBG) has been prevalent for quite some time. However, the penetration and frequency has been low due to lack of actionable outputs besides a black box sugar reading. BeatO with the help of Machine Learning technologies and meticulously built care pathways and prediction/recommendation engines is disrupting Diabetes Care by making SMBG a pivotal aspect of care and engaging users with full stack of Diabetes.

Innovation, no matter how disruptive, cannot come at the cost of being insanely expensive. One of the key objectives of successful innovation is also to build sustainable products and solutions,which must percolate to a deeper level and change lives of masses for good. Healthcare requirements are common in rural and urban India alike. Any solution that can address both these demographics, will ensure customer satisfaction and accrue results.

In Conclusion

There is constant innovation taking place in healthcare. However, the need of the hour is to ensure simplicity in design, to give the wow feeling to customers in service delivery, and replace existing methodologies with new innovative products and services creating behavioural shifts and opening up more new requirements for innovation. Also important is affordability for the masses. Only by ensuring that the innovations become accessible to all segments of society can companies empower people and sustain satisfied customers. Effective diabetes management with innovative technology is closer than we think. However, the need of the hour is awareness and putting spotlight on these and be willing to use these to empower ourselves.