Dr. Supharerk Thawillarp Interview

1. How do you see the integration of technology and human touch reshaping patient experience in today’s healthcare landscape?

There are several emerging technologies in health care, e.g. generative AI, IoT and so on.

While those technologies are designed to relived burden from the healthcare provider, it could not replace human touch.

Balancing the two aspects in healthcare, how can we integrate them without losing human touch while preserving the benefit for our healthcare providers.

As new technologies and innovation keeps coming up, this question will remain to be answered and largely depends on how we apply them in individual clinical settings.

2. Can you share specific examples or case studies where technology has significantly enhanced patient engagement and experience in your practice or organization?

Online appointment, where patients do not need to visit hospital in early morning, they just register online and walk-in on their appointment slot.

Or Ministry of Public Health program where the patients don’t need to wait at the pharmacy after seeing their doctors. They just go back and their medication will be delivered by the end of the day for free.

This really reduce the hospital crowding and staffs stress while improve patient experience.

3. What challenges do healthcare providers face when balancing technological advancements with maintaining a personal, human touch in patient care?

Healthcare is about “Trust” so it will take sometimes for healthcare provider to accept those technologies as part of their care. This cause limited adoption in several healthcare technologies in practice.

4. In your opinion, what are the key technological trends that will drive the future of patient experience and engagement?

As a patient myself, the technologies have to make healthcare more efficient. Any thing that could healthcare more affordable, better clinical outcome, less complication.

What we are seeing is the 3D printing, Robotics surgery and so on, but regardless of technologies, again, anything that can make healthcare more affordable, less time in the hospital and better clinical outcome would be a great experience for patient like me.

5. How do you ensure that technological innovations in healthcare are accessible and user-friendly for both patients and healthcare providers?

You will need field test. There are several innovation that looks really good on research but fail horrible in real health care setting causing skeptical from healthcare professional.
To ensure is to test and verify in a small scale in real-life setting, and most of the time, you will surprise with the result.

6. What insights or key takeaways do you hope to share with the attendees at the 4th Annual Patient Experience & Engagement Summit in Bangkok?

There always new innovation in healthcare and will continue to do so, but patients will always wonder why adoption in health care is so slow. This is because health care is about trust, you trust in us, so we have to make sure those innovation will really improve your life.