Comment by shanecleveland
7 years ago
There are many factors at play. I work for a US manufacturer in the medical industry, and our customers definitely lag behind in technology. Some of the things I see:
Much of the workforce is older and adoption of new technology is avoided by many.
Large organizations move slowly and health care workers don't tend to be among early adopters of technology.
While working individually, face-to-face with a patient, pen and paper can actually be the best option.
A younger workforce, more understanding patient population and new environments centered around technology first will occur eventually.
I'm a (relatively) young and tech-savvy doctor. The electronic medical records I have used (around 5 or 6) are all truly terrible. As the medical director of a group of clinics, I explored replacing our terrible system, and every other system I looked that was a reasonable fit for our needs was, at best, marginally better.
While there are other factors at play, the main one is that electronic medical record software is really, really bad.
No doubt. I didn't mean to minimize this aspect.
I think it will take a new generation of professionals like yourself involved in building not only the software systems, but also the hardware used, the clinic environment and entire patient experience. As it is, these terrible systems, designed by non-medical professionals, are dropped in the laps of practitioners who are not comfortable with technology in settings not designed around the use of technology.