With an ideology that “Better data means better healthcare – and in healthcare, better has no limit,” Tim Kelsey, a former journalist, gave up his initial career path after such an impacting realisation.
In 2019—PKS and Pavilion Health, Australia—came together as one entity, now known as Beamtree, to support healthcare providers create a better future for health. Tim, being the CEO of Beamtree, has been committed since, to delivering a better value to the healthcare system in Australia and beyond.
When Insights Care came across Tim, we were astonished by his dedication to his work and keen to know how it influenced the healthcare sector widely.
Let’s learn about Tim’s strategy behind better healthcare in the below interview highlights:
Kindly tell us the source of inspiration for venturing into the Healthcare Sector.
I was a journalist for ten years at the start of my career – working as a foreign correspondent and an investigative reporter for national newspapers and broadcasters in the UK. I was committed to promoting transparency in public life and realised that healthcare was a secret society for most patients. People didn’t know how good their local hospital was or how well it was spending public money on the outcomes of the local community.
In 2000, I had left journalism to set up an organisation in England, which we named Dr. Foster, to push for more openness and more data to be made available so that clinical professionals, their patients, and society could use that insight most effectively to improve safety and quality in care – and the best health outcomes. That has been the theme ever since: better data means better healthcare – and in healthcare, better has no limit.
Brief us about yourself and shed some light on your journey as the guiding light of Beamtree.
I’ve been fortunate to work as a digital health leader in the United Kingdom and Australia. I was the inaugural CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency, which led an unprecedented digital reform program to provide citizens with access to online health records. Before that, I was the National Director for Patients and Information at NHS England, where I had responsibility for national data and technology services for the world’s largest unitary health service.
I co-founded and was the inaugural chair of the Global Digital Health Partnership, which now has more than 35 country participants, alongside multinational organisations, including the WHO and OECD. I have also served as senior vice president of Analytics International at HIMSS, a notfor- profit organisation supporting the digital empowerment of health and well-being worldwide.
In addition, I’m a visiting professor at Imperial College, London, and a noted author, including Transparency and the Open Society (the 2016 University of Chicago, with Roger Taylor).
Can you elaborate upon the core values on which Beamtree is built and what is the mission of the organisation?
We are committed to creating a better future for health. Beamtree’s mission is to serve the health ecosystem by turning data into positive action through insights and automation. Our vision is to become a global leader in the design of Learning Health Systems enabled by our people, expertise, and technologies. This is supported by our core values: trusted, creative, collaborative, and deliberate.
We help leading healthcare systems worldwide tackle unwarranted variations in outcomes, supporting the safety and well-being of patients by using automation and data analytics to drive improvements and quality. Beamtree also assists providers in reducing waste and inefficiency – and improving revenue assurance – through data accuracy while fostering greater transparency and supporting equity of access for patients.
What, according to you, are the modern standards in healthcare data for delivering quality healthcare services around the world?
Quality must be the first imperative of modern healthcare. Although the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the quality retreat, it can be traced as far back as the global financial\ crisis of 2008 and other key barriers to placing quality at the heart of health systems, including the need for regulatory environments that enable data-driven healthcare and implementing learning health systems which measure what matters and do not just focus on targets driven by political imperatives.
Recently, Beamtree’s Global Impact Committee published its first report titled “Quality in Retreat,” which draws from the experience of the committee members and offers new perspectives on how we can continue to focus on quality. Empowering learning health systems is also imperative in delivering quality healthcare services. These systems drive continuous safety, quality, and efficiency improvement through better access to accurate healthcare information. We continue to invest in opportunities to create thought leadership and communities of practice to influence and prompt the health sector to think about age-old problems in new ways.
Tell us about some of the research operations that you encourage at Beamtree to come up with data solutions. How are these solutions serving patient care in general?
The direct benefit to patient outcomes was recently highlighted by the first public hospital implementation of Beamtree’s Ainsoff Deterioration Index™ (ADI). This pioneering application detects and enables early clinical intervention with deteriorating patients.
The program in South Australia demonstrated early warning capability with mean early alert times reported as 20 hours before a standard Medical Emergency Response (MER) call. This is significant, as traditional early warning systems’ ability to alert peaks at 4 hours prior to adverse events. One local doctor described it as ‘the most important development in her 35 years as a practising clinician’. While this product is in its early development stage, it is gaining international interest. It is an example of our new product investment success, and we are working on implementations in three new countries.
What advice would you like to give to budding entrepreneurs and enthusiasts aspiring to venture into the healthcare niche?
Your team will always be your greatest asset. Ensure you surround yourself with the right people – both in your team and by building connections with healthcare industry leaders. We are always outward-focused, looking to experience the latest entrepreneurial inventors have to offer and how we fit in a modern and future-focused industry.
How do you envision scaling your organisation’s services and operations in 2023 and beyond?
Over the next four years, Beamtree’s strategy will see us placed at the heart of transformative healthcare. 2022 saw significant delivery of our plan, leveraging success in our core business and securing cash flow in an immediate and long-term pipeline; expanding our reach in existing and new country markets; and improving our solutions, processes, and customer experience.
Beamtree has invested in pilot product development which responds proactively to key problems identified by our client base and addresses their developing needs. We are at the beginning of this phase to see a drive to improve productivity through increasing automation– improving the end-to-end customer journey and investigating new applications of existing technology to maximise the expert workforce. We have progressed several innovation partnerships globally.
We are also investing in academic partnerships and research opportunities while we develop new technologies that adapt to evolving healthcare thinking centred on high-growth markets, informed by the needs of our clients, the changing landscape of health and work, and the direction of the Global Impact Committee.
What are some of the testimonials or recognition that accurately highlight your organisation’s position in the market?
“Our Trust is determined to provide the best possible services… that starts with making sure we use the best possible data to inform both our clinical decision making and our ongoing patient care. This partnership (with Beamtree) is testament to our commitment to patient safety, transparency and the smart allocation of resources.”
– Milton Keynes University Hospital, United Kingdom
“The (Beamtree) solutions implemented have driven many improvements in health information, data management and the delivery of clinical care. The partnership is one of collaboration and innovation.”
– St Vincent’s Private, Australia
| Next Story: https://insightscare.com/jennifer-chow-bringing-the-promise-of-cell-therapy-to-cure-cancer/ |
