THE FINAL WORD Shrikanth Shetty FILLING TOMORROW'S PRESCRIPTION The two most common sentiments I hear from healthcare and life sciences CXOs are their optimism about the potential of recent technological innovations to improve the lives of patients and their frustration at how long it takes to get their organizations to actually adopt those innovations - to make their organizations "future ready" - especially when compared to industries such as financial services and consumer products. Why the frustration? For one thing, in healthcare and the life sciences some of the hurdles to adoption, such as the need for patient data security and regulatory compliance, are higher than in many other industries. EVP & Head of Life Sciences and Healthcare, HCL Technologies For another, the multiple layers in healthcare that often separate the patient and the service provider, whether hospital or pharmaceutical company or maker of medical devices, create complexity and thus make it more difficult to quantify the ROI of a digital investment and capture its value. Furthermore, there is understandably some inherent caution about technological change in an industry whose products often make a life-or-death difference to end users.