Digital transformation in public health: start with the service, not the technology

In this blog, Jane Coyne explores why successful digital transformation in public health starts with understanding the service, not choosing the technology — and why frontline expertise and implementation matters just as much as the digital solution itself.

Digital transformation has enormous potential to improve how health improvement and prevention services operate. Better systems can reduce administrative burden, improve data quality, connect services, support decision-making and create more efficient ways of working. But introducing new technology doesn’t automatically create transformation.

Start with the problem

Before asking what technology is needed, start by understanding what needs to work better.

Where are teams duplicating effort? Where are processes unnecessarily complicated? What information is difficult to access? Where are people relying on spreadsheets, manual workarounds or disconnected systems? What prevents services from understanding their performance? Only then should technology enter the conversation.

A digital solution should be designed around the service it needs to support — not the other way around.

Bring frontline expertise into digital design

People delivering services understand their workflows in a way that a technical specification alone cannot capture.

Involving them early helps uncover the small operational details that can determine whether a system becomes an integral part of everyday practice or another platform people struggle to use.

Our work supporting digital solutions for tobacco dependence treatment has reinforced the importance of bringing together three perspectives: public health expertise, frontline delivery and technology.

Each is important, and transformation only happens when they work together.

Implementation matters as much as development

Even a well-designed digital solution can fail if implementation is treated as an afterthought.

Organisations need to think about readiness, processes, training, communications, data, governance and how people will be supported to adopt new ways of working.

Digital transformation isn't simply about replacing one system with another. Done well, it is an opportunity to rethink how a service operates — improving operational performance, and ultimately supporting better outcomes for the populations it serves.