Dreamforce 2018 – More Healthcare Than Ever

September 25, 2018
Colin Hung
4 Min Read

The annual Dreamforce event starts today in San Francisco. This year, more time on the agenda has been dedicated to healthcare and life sciences highlighting Salesforce’s continued investment in these industries.

I have never been to Dreamforce, but every year I find myself enviously reading the tweets that fly past. There are always great quotes from the high-calibre keynote speakers and a lot of interesting talk about new technologies from attendees.

What I found noticeable about Dreamforce 2018,  #DF18, is the number of HealthIT companies that will be speaking and exhibiting at the event. I have seen more tweets and received more notices about companies participating at #DF18 than in any other year. Some of the Healthcare presenters this year include:

For the full list see this handy Dreamforce TrailMap for Healthcare and Life Sciences:

I remember when Salesforce first appeared at the annual HIMSS event. I spent a lot of time in their booth learning about their healthcare initiative. Back then their solution was focused exclusively on care coordination. Patients were entered as “customers” and health information from different source systems would flow into Salesforce. This data would be associated with the patient record and accessible to different members of the care team to help coordinate care. It was pretty rudimentary.

Company executives that I spoke to did not have answers to my questions about the future direction of their healthcare initiatives. They simply did not know. Fast forward to today and it seems clear that Salesforce is pursuing a healthcare strategy that is like what they have used in other industries – build a few apps on their own to prove it can be done, then be open to others building apps using Salesforce as the backbone and connective tissue.

Judging by the number of HealthIT companies that have chosen to partner with Salesforce, I would say the strategy is working.

“Our patient experience platform is built on the Salesforce platform,” explains Sunny Tara, Co-founder and CEO of CareCognitics. “EHRs are the operational systems for hospitals. They were well suited to replace healthcare’s fee for service billing system. However, as we move to a value-based system focused on improved care, hospitals need the power and personalization that comes from a true CRM system. What we have done is built a platform that bridges existing EHRs with advanced patient loyalty capabilities built on top of Force.com. Doctors and patients love it.”

“Our partnership with Salesforce and integration with Health Cloud is further proof of PointClickCare’s commitment to creating intelligent care coordination between health systems and post-acute providers,” says BJ Boyle, VP Product Management at PointClickCare. “With two-thirds of the skilled nursing market using PointClickCare, we’re uniquely positioned to help LTPAC providers across the country be great partners with health systems. Leveraging Salesforce’s Health Cloud offers us new and exciting ways to do this even more effectively.”

Over the next few days I will be watching for healthcare announcements and tweets from #DF18. I am hoping to see further proof that Salesforce is building an ecosystem of partners to help bring better personalization, interoperability and cloud capabilities to healthcare.

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Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

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