Surviving the Technological Transition in Health Care

If you ask any healthcare provider today, a tsunami of technology is swamping the healthcare industry. This wave is causing a lot of “change anxiety” among people from patients to pharmaceutical companies. And caught right in the middle are the people mostly responsible for delivering healthcare – physicians, PAs, nurses and technicians.

The New York Times Health section recently featured a story: "When computers come between doctors and patients." This article addressed the issue of patient care in an environment where the HCP is forced to deal with computers and other devices that come between that HCP and the human patient before him.  The complexities of this relationship are causing some HCPs to resist using new technologies because of a belief that patient “eye contact” outweighs the benefits of technology.

This is a temporary, albeit real, issue. Tech history is full of examples of “transitional” technologies that delivered a real benefit, but came with some fairly high costs (both financial and otherwise). Look at the VCR, online video, or even the cellular telephone.

The videotape was a clumsy way of solving the problem of recording television. You had to set up a timer (remember all those flashing 12:00s?), tune the channel, and make sure you had enough tape to record the program. We all missed a lot of shows because we messed up one or another of those steps. Now look at how the DVR has not only made it easy to record multiple shows at different times, but has essentially changed our TV viewing habits:   Find the show, select record, you’re done. Easy and reliable. Remember the first cell phones? You had to carry it in a purse-sized bag, and calls were an eye-popping dollar a minute. If you could get a signal. Alternatively, you could have one in your car. Useful – unless you weren’t in the car.

The point is that technology is evolutionary, and the first generation or two of any new technology (remember Windows 3.1?) is usually some kind of “kludge.” Those first efforts are really just to test the concept and understand what the problem is that needs solving. Once people begin to adopt those solutions (primitive as they frequently are), the people making the technology learn quickly and improvements are rapid and impressive.

The PC in today’s exam room is clearly a transitional technology. Better solutions are on the way. Already approximately 80 percent of doctors use smartphones daily, and a rapidly growing number of them use those devices to access healthcare information via the exploding array of medical applications available. These devices are more portable, personal and far more conducive to human interaction.  

It’s just a matter of time.  We have to give health care professionals time to surf this wave to the shore. It won’t be long before they’ve learned and embraced this new paradigm.  Once the HCP can stop struggling with the technology, her attention will naturally shift back to the patient and that all-important eye contact.  It's like learning a foreign language.  At some point you stop "translating" and just start "speaking."

About the Author

Bob Kernen, VP Product/HCPlexus

Before joining HCPlexus, developer of the little blue book and its mobile application, tlbb Mobile, the most trusted referral resource for physicians for over 23 years, Bob Kernen spent over 20 years being a thought leader and innovator in digital and traditional media.  As Associate Vice President - Product for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Bob oversaw daily production of a website generating 35 million monthly page views and created the product roadmap for all of the company's interactive products.Prior to that, Bob spent 5 years at A&E Television Networks, most recently as Director-Advanced Television and Emerging Platforms where he created a number of interactive TV programs and implemented the company's broadband content management system, oversaw all product and business development around emerging media platforms, and managed all premium websites. Previously, Bob worked within multimedia development at Women.com Networks (Director, Broadband & Multimedia) and WebTV Networks (Producer).   Bob is a seasoned entrepreneur and startup specialist, having founded the digital music company GrokMusic.com and created SEO and taxonomies for content businesses like The Money Pit and Maven Networks. He is also an aspiring Jeopardy! contestant and an Emmy Award-winning writer and published author.

Bob has a BA in Cinema-Television from the University of Southern California.