A conversation with Tom Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief at League

Long-time healthcare and technology journalist and editor Tom Sullivan has joined League as its new editor-in-chief.

Recognized as a thought leader in healthcare technology, Sullivan joins League after serving at Health Evolution. Prior to that, he spent nearly a decade at HIMSS as editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News and master of ceremonies for HIMSS Media events that focused on topics ranging from analytics and big data to privacy, security and patient experience. Before HIMSS, Sullivan covered enterprise IT at IDG’s InfoWorld during the digital transformation of industries including banking, retail and the emergence of e-commerce.

We sat down with Sullivan to discuss his new role at League and the state of consumer experience in healthcare.   

Q: What inspired you to join League? 

Engaging and empowering people in their own health is the hardest problem healthcare leaders face right now. That means it’s incumbent upon health systems, health plans, employers and consumer health organizations to provide world-class consumer experiences — or risk falling behind the competition.

Against that backdrop, I see my position with League as a unique opportunity to play a role in making a tangible impact on improving the consumer experience in healthcare by driving thought leadership to manifest the company’s CX and healthcare expertise.  

Q: As a long-time observer of the healthcare IT landscape, how do you see League fitting in? 

League brings unique and critical technologies to the landscape that enable a truly patient-first approach to healthcare. Well-meaning health plans and health systems have spent the better part of two decades working toward digital transformation, but the shortcomings of outdated technology were compounded by point solutions that tried to solve every issue individually. League, instead, is taking a platform approach that integrates data sources and point solutions to deliver healthcare consumer experiences more efficiently and effectively.   

Q: How do you see a platform approach impacting healthcare? 

Fortunately, we have numerous examples that show how platform technologies have transformed CX across industries. Banking, for example, adopted open-architecture software more than 30 years ago — a move that paved the way for mobile banking and trading platforms that have become ingrained in our everyday lives. Platforms will fundamentally reshape how consumers interact with every aspect of their healthcare, just as banking evolved from a paper-based business in brick-and-mortar locations to a completely mobile, digital ecosystem.  

Q: Why is CX the hardest problem to solve in healthcare? 

We cannot ignore healthcare’s inherent complexity. This is a heavily regulated field built around the most personal issue: the health and wellbeing of humans. League’s healthcare CX platform is designed to provide personalization in every interaction that can guide any patient or health plan member through their own unique health journey. 

Existing point solutions too often lack the nimbleness needed to speak to each patient individually. A person with diabetes has needs that are completely different from a patient managing a knee replacement. Those are just two basic examples, and the technology solutions we deploy must specifically address every type of situation. On top of that, patients have higher expectations than ever before because everyday applications such as Amazon and Spotify have mastered the art and science of personalization.