Very interesting to think about the various small "stress inducing" moments in life and how fixing them makes a magical experience. #WEDI25
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 24, 2016
I thought this was a really genius perspective that I heard at the WEDI Annual conference. Or at least it was the thought that was inspired at the conference. I think the speaker was referencing various apps like Uber or Lyft and how they took a whole set of small, individually stress inducing moments and solved them.
Using that example, it was stressful to wonder when the cab would come, it’s stressful to know if the cab will take credit cards, it’s stressful to know if the cab is taking a longer route to make you pay more, etc etc etc. None of these individually was all that stressful but combined they made for a pretty stressful experience. Uber and Lyft were able to look at all of those minor individual stresses and make a great customer experience by removing them.
It’s worth pointing out that these companies likely needed to solve more than one stress for their app to be successful. If they’d only solved one small stress, they likely wouldn’t be as popular today as they have been.
Now let’s apply this to healthcare IT. Ironically, I think many would argue that EHRs have taken a bunch of small stresses and turned them into large stresses. That’s the pessimistic viewpoint. Although, it’s pretty hard to argue that most EHR software has taken the stress out of the medical documentation experience. Is it any wonder that so many doctors hate EHR?
I guess I’m pretty pessimistic that EHR vendors will change and start taking the little stresses out of the healthcare experience. A few EHR vendors have done better than others but most of them are making so much money doing what they’re doing, they’re unlikely to change course. Does that mean we give up hope?
Not me. I’m optimistic about technology’s ability to make healthcare better. I just don’t think it’s going to come from EHR vendors. Instead, it’s going to come from entrepreneurs who do create magical experiences that take the small stresses out of a doctor’s or patient’s day. They may tie into the EHR, but they’ll build it separately.
What do you think? Where have you seen solutions that solve the “small” stresses in healthcare? We could use more “magic”.
