Harnessing Continuous Learning For Smarter Healthcare Systems

Forbes

02-07-2025

Prasanna Parthasarathy is the CEO of Medvantx, a non-commercial dispensing pharmacy.
The world is undergoing rapid transformation. Artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and robotics are reshaping industries while evolving consumer expectations and a rapidly shifting global economy demand adaptability. Dynamic geopolitical shifts, trade tariffs and societal changes further complicate the landscape, requiring businesses to exhibit flexibility.
Adapting to and thriving amid rapid change requires more than a mindset. To stay ahead, organizations need to constantly refine their approaches, driven by both technological advancements and an understanding of shifting market dynamics. I've seen within my own company how innovation driven by continuous learning can serve as a framework for improving patient care through data, analytics and human insight, enhancing outcomes and personalizing the experiences we provide customers and patients.
The Principles Behind Continuous Learning
Continuous learning is the pursuit of excellence through ongoing refinement, reflection and reinvention. It's taking a proactive approach to change and staying ahead by upgrading your internal capabilities, leveraging emerging technologies and anticipating market shifts to unlock smarter, faster and more future-ready ways to solve problems—both internally and for your customers.
One way to bring continuous learning to life is by implementing a structured quality management methodology. Tools such as Lean Six Sigma, root cause analysis, value stream mapping and DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) can help improve consistency by minimizing variation across processes to emphasize waste reduction, efficiency and data-driven decision-making. They can also enable teams to identify bottlenecks and make decisions grounded in data rather than assumptions. By training your employees in these types of systems, you cultivate a workforce that's capable of driving change from the ground up while reducing time waste, enhancing workflow design and automating manual tasks.
Your own data is a powerful tool for identifying areas for improvement, but your team still needs the ability to turn data-derived business intelligence into on-the-ground changes, whether they be changes to processes, products, service offerings, pricing or other facets of your operational or commercial strategy. Since it is not always obvious what changes will work best for each unique company, A/B testing can help you gather measurable data on what improvements will achieve the best results.
Lessons In Leveraging Continuous Learning
Continuous learning is a practical strategy that, when applied intentionally, can improve nearly every operational aspect of a business. For us, such initiatives transformed everything from our workflow for order entry to how medications are packaged and delivered.
I recommend focusing any changes you make on three audiences: your team, whose dedication to continuous improvement is required to power the engine of change; your customers (in our case, pharmaceutical companies); and their customers, which may include both patients and providers.
At its core, continuous improvement asks, "How can we do this better, more efficiently and with less risk?" Whether you're implementing a management methodology or updating your marketing strategy, these optimizations shouldn't stop at one-off fixes—they should evolve as technology advances, in order to create sustainable and scalable ways of pursuing excellence. Create a mindset of challenging yourselves to continually improve. Leveraging the skills and expertise of your own staff can allow you to unlock new ways to improve operations, harness automation and integrate AI into your workflows.
Implementing these changes can directly benefit employees and customers. For example, we streamlined the manual process of account managers compiling and sending monthly service reports by implementing a cloud-based platform that gave customers real-time access to key performance metrics. Now, account managers have more time to build relationships, and customers get better data access.
Customers in any industry want their vendors to be strategic partners who can anticipate needs and enable growth. In a rapidly changing economy, an ongoing commitment to continuous improvement—leveraging data as the backbone—can help you better support your customers.
Any type of business can benefit from leveraging frontline learnings and data in product development. Our recent overhaul of our cash-pay product workflow illustrates this well. Cash-pay programs enable pharmaceutical companies to more easily serve customers for prescription drugs that are not typically covered by insurance, such as weight loss drugs, sexual health products and ophthalmological and dermatological treatments. Previously, our process depended on fragmented data from a third-party vendor, which slowed down our ability to fulfill customer orders. Our continuous learning mindset helped us reinvent the product from the ground up, addressing the shortcomings of the prior version from the customer and end-user perspective.
You can also leverage continuous learning, facilitated by robust data and analytics, to predict the behavior of your customers' customers (i.e., patients) and to match your service offerings to their preferences. This approach draws inspiration from the omnichannel strategies used by e-commerce companies to create personalized user experiences. For example, some patients may desire a staffed phone line, while others will see more value in AI-driven self-service tools such as chatbots.
I've seen the success of this approach and the benefits of planning for a future where AI solutions streamline currently manual processes. By offering a convenient and efficient self-service model, you can help your customers empower their patients and digitize their experience.
Looking Forward
Implementing continuous learning isn't an instantaneous choice. It requires a long-term investment in seeing through cultural, structural and educational shifts—moving beyond the desire for 'quick wins' and project-based improvements and toward a mindset of ongoing improvement across the organization.
It's also not a series of one-time investments, but rather building a workplace culture of constantly innovating and iterating, leveraging data to guide business decisions and rallying teams to improve measurable outcomes. Investing in professional technical competencies and a quality management methodology can enable your teams to think systematically about change and to develop soft skills such as communication, teamwork and leadership. Building this foundation takes time, but when done right, it can result in an organization well-equipped to meet the challenges ahead.
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