existential choice: embrace digital transformation or risk obsolescence. At Westshore Medical Private Hospital in Trinidad, Stephen King embodies this urgency.The 61-year-old Chief Operations and New Business Development Officer describes himself as “not the typical baby boomer,” and his ambitious plans prove it. While the region grapples with a 10-year lag in digital health fundamentals, King is architecting a radical departure from traditional hospital operations. “It’s interesting for me that where I sit is between the technology business and developing new businesses and services,” says King, whose title change in 2024 signals Westshore’s strategic pivot. “Recently the board changed my title from Chief Operations Officer to Chief Operations and Business Development Officer, which is important because it’s a very different focus. Instead of looking at the facilities, we are really looking at the business, its efficiencies, systems, and how to differentiate West Shore. Services, patient experience and Outcomes” The hospital’s current state reveals the magnitude of change ahead; there is a high dependency on paperbased systems.“EMR,online scheduling,telemedicine, nothing, zero,” King states bluntly about the private and public hospital technological infrastructure after more than five decades of operation. This gap becomes more striking considering Trinidad and Tobago’s relatively high financial inclusion rate of 80.8 percent, well above the Latin American and Caribbean average, and the government’s establishment of a dedicated Ministry of Digital Transformation in 2021. FROM PAPER TO ONLINE PORTAL West Shore’s digital transformation centers on an ambitious portal that reimagines patient 5 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 12, ISSUE 06 WESTSHORE MEDICAL PRIVATE HOSPITAL
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