During a recent visit to NYC, someone pointed to the Apple store on 5th Ave across from the Plaza Hotel and mentioned to me that it is the most profitable store in the USA. Indeed, Apple sells $6000 per sq.ft.

Online frames maker Warby Parker came in second. Retail is no longer just brick and mortar or strictly online. It is a combination of the two-digital and physical-that creates profit synergies. Recently, even online powerhouse Amazon announced that they will be opening between 300 and 400 stores and recently bought Whole Foods as an assault on Walmart.

Here’s what sick care can learn from retail.

Eden Health is just one in a pack of companies looking to blend in-person and digital care to offer end-to-end solutions for employers wanting to cut their healthcare costs. 

Case in point, employer clinic company Crossover Health recently acquired online primary care startup Sheerpa to build out its virtual care apparatus.

Another competitor is Carbon Health, a San Francisco-based virtual primary care provider which merged with a chain of urgent care clinics to provide a combination of physical and online-based services.

Boston-based Partners HealthCare is becoming clinically and digitally integrated with One Medical, the nationwide membership-based primary care platform that combines digital health and in-office visits.

Digitouch technologies should be designed to scale humans and create more balance between high tech and high touch. Examples include platforms designed to improve prescription compliance and adherence, AI driven data analytics that provide clinical decision support and virtual behavioral health intervention.

Yet, Brick and mortar stores are shuttering at a record pace but brick and mortar enterprises need some kind of digital strategy. What will online care look like this time next year?

The same is happening to the sick care business, with telemedicine, remote sensing, online information and education sites and much more supplementing traditional hospitals, clinics and offices. Most of sick care is not there yet. But, by making the shift from healthcare company to digital enterprise, industry participants can capitalize on a number of emerging “battleground” opportunities.

A recent McKinsey reports suggested the 4 keys to successful digital healthcare transformation in healthcare. Healthcare companies first need to identify and prioritize their critical sources of value; they need to identify the products and services they provide that lead to competitive differentiation and that would benefit most from digitization. Second, they must build their service-delivery capabilities—not just in physically integrating and managing new digital technologies but also in implementing new approaches to product development and distribution (for instance, agile and DevOps methodologies). Third, healthcare companies should look for ways to modernize their IT foundations, for example upgrading pools of talent and expertise in the IT organization, moving to digital platforms such as cloud servers and software-as-a-service products, managing data as a strategic asset, and improving security protocols for the company’s most vital assets. And fourth, companies must ensure that they build and maintain core management competencies. In other words, all the enablers that allow them to pursue a successful digital agenda.

Here is another model.

In addition, the point of care is increasingly being supplemented by care teams who do the heavy lifting when it comes to chronic care, care coordination, complex hand offs, population health and data analytics and predictive modeling.

Sick-health care looks a lot like what Barnes and Noble looked like 25 years ago. Need a book? You have to go to a store. Return the book? You have to go to a store. What about getting discounts and deals or information about what others thought about your potential choice? You have to go to a store. Of course, for most industries, those days have changed. Sick care is not most industries and it will take many years for eCare to be added to the digical care model. In addition, telecommunications and media companies will be part of the mix providing you with content via larger and larger pipes accessible over mobile devices and, eventually, becoming part of a global, interoperable information network. Not only will you be able to get pesos via the ATM in Santiago, but you’ll be able to download your health data when you have to go to an emergency room there. Google translate will make it happen in Spanish, too.

Physician entrepreneurs will only survive in the future deploying a digical model that optimizes digital health technology business models. However, no one said it would be easy. There are challenges unfamiliar to most brick and mortar docs.

Here are some things to incorporate into your digical care strategy:

1. An eCare strategy that is aligned with your other face to face (F2F) services

2. Subsegmenting your patient population by those that highly value convenience over F2F care

3. An eCare infrastructure that integrates, coordinates and consolidates episodes of care to reduce hand off errors

4. A business model for eCare that is VAST. 

5. Systems that comply with laws and regulations regarding privacy and security. Do we need to change HIPAA to advance care coordination?

6. User interfaces that don’t interfere with workflow and are easy to use and accessible on mobile devices

7. Specific to a given patient population

8. Gets the biggest bang for the buck. Remember, 5% of Medicare beneficiaries spend 50% of the budget

9. Interfaces with data translated into information to increase the effectiveness of analytical techniques designed to lower cost and minimize inappropriate resource utilization

10. Meets clearly defined clinical and business objectives like cutting costs or increasing revenues and market share.

11. Deciding whether you want to make or buy

12. Having policies and procedures that integrate into other operations

13. Measuring KPIs that are aligned with your vision, mission and values

14. Staffing the digital infrastructure

15. Having a digital budget

Sick care is not alone in learning how to master the digital transformation process. In addition to technology adoption, important factors for successful digital transformation are the ability of an organization to change and operational excellence in the integration of external digital services with internal IT support.

You can learn from others who have made it work, but you shouldn’t have to go to Africa. There is enough opportunity in the US. Here are some examples of companies deploying a digical care strategy in the US. The same strategy applies to engaging members of other business or innovation communities, like medtech and biopharma.

Leading this effort will require that you or someone you hire assume the role of Chief Digital Officer and be tasked with unifying the digital agenda, bridging the talent gap, confronting legacy structures and using technology to exceed key performance indicators.

I’m sorry, you didn’t like your book. Feel free to exchange or get a refund on our online site, via our catalog, in one of our stores or using our App. Thanks for shopping at Barnes and Noble, MD.

and Co-editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship