Successful leadership for digitalization initiatives requires both courage and extensive skills in change management to make the management change. Courage and boldness are badly needed to challenge the cultures that eat strategies. Change management is badly needed in the wider sense of “applied systematic quality improvement”, where decisions always are based on facts and the key decision makers master the value equation for explaining the Return on Investment (ROI). The now strained healthcare finances will remain so for years to come, and with a relative shortage of healthcare professionals, digitalization must be very effective and make the best use of available resources. 

Many digitalization initiatives in healthcare risk to be failures, not primarily because they are, but because they cannot demonstrate how and to what extent they contribute to making healthcare better, in both qualitative and quantitative terms. The principles that guide in methods for systematic reviews, for example HTA (Health Technology Assessment) and similar methods, could be useful in sorting out the digital tools that healthcare should focus on.

This lecture will identify the hurdles in successful leading of healthcare digitalization and shed light over the leadership capacities and capabilities that are needed to make the right decisions that are always based on facts to ensure that a change is an improvement.

This lecture should be of interest to all leaders in healthcare, as successful digitalization must be a concern for everyone.