Life with clients - Looking beyond your own backyard - Annual Review 2008

Looking beyond your own backyard

Sometimes it takes a broader, more global perspective to get a client to think about you differently. That’s what Deloitte member firm partners in Canada and the United States were going for with Alberta Health Services - Capital Health, one of Canada’s largest integrated health systems.

Recent work focusing on translational medicine—the practice of extending clinical research into day-to-day patient care—was typical of the work Deloitte United States and Deloitte Canada had performed for Alberta Health Services - Capital Health. But going to the next phase—that was something different.

“We needed to show them that we could go beyond planning to implementation, even though we’ve never done this type of work before,” says Deloitte U.S. consulting principal and project lead Keith Strier.

Strier knew that when it came to innovations in health care delivery, some of the best practices were in Asia. “So we thought, why not take the client to witness these practices firsthand?”

So they did, in South Korea and Japan, where Strier and his team led Capital Health and collaborators from the University of Alberta through visits with leaders from top translational programs at some of the leading biomedical research institutes and digital hospitals.

“We are always looking for innovation,” says Donna Strating of Alberta Health Services - Capital Health. “Deloitte showed us that sometimes we need to look beyond our borders—even beyond our hemisphere—to find the best solutions.”