Interruptions Are Bad For Your Health.
Patient-Physician Interaction should be a priority of future technology development in healthcare.
I love tech! I think its the best thing since two-ply toilet paper, not to mention my medical technology blog you are currently reading. Tech is great, but tech has a long way to go! First, let me explain what I mean by tech; gadgets, electronics, gizmos that beep, whistle and vibrate, screens, lights, cables, wires, and buttons.
It is an unfortunate fact that technology has the tendency to get in the way. When I’m chatting with my buddy, and my phone rings, it’s an interruption. And if I take the call, then I’m just rude! There is a time and a place for this type of isolating technology. Right now I am sitting in front of my computer, sound cancelling headphones are blaring and nothing but my word processing application is open on screen. This is me not interacting with the world for a reason, with the purpose of completing this blog post before my boss finds out what I’m doing.
Now lets take this same computer and place it in a doctor’s office examination room. We’ve all been there. Those comforting rooms with grey wall paint, uncomfortable beds with a layer of tear-away paper, and a computer in the corner. The doctor will walk in, introduce herself, small talk for a minute (maybe) and then get right down to business. The computer is there to access the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system that most clinics use nowadays. Usually, the physician will face the patient to ask a question, and then make a full half-turn AWAY from the patient to begin typing the information into the computer. If you speak to a neurologist, they will tell you that the human mind can not multi-task. Rapid task switching is the limit of the brain, where it can focus on one task and then rapidly switch to other tasks for moments before going back to the original task. So in the case of the skilled physician, how can they listen to and interpret the patient’s words while trying to navigate the software and type into the text boxes of the EMR? Being a physician is hard enough, never mind trying to force the brain to multitask when it is not physically possible! And besides, don’t you want your doctor focused on you?
This is one example of how technology is getting in the way! The whole point of healthcare is to assist human-beings in overcoming the challenges of obtaining health. Thus, when a patient is visiting the Doctor’s office, communication between two individuals is everything. When that communication is broken down, the healthcare of the patient is threatened. So my point is to emphasize the importance of human interaction. The device that I use to block out the world and avoid communication with my boss, should not be the same technology that is used in an environment that relies on communication.
I believe this is the reason for why healthcare has been so slow in adopting technology that many other industries have already adopted. Online banking software has been around for years, but where is the online healthcare portal for patients? Well, first of all, tracking medical data is much more complex than tracking financial transactions, with the exception of the convoluted world of the stock market. The technology hasn’t been advanced enough to track medical data well, but this is quickly changing with businesses like IBM, Epic and many other medical application vendors. They are bringing amazing technology to the market that is powerful enough to organize and simplify some of healthcare’s intrinsic complexities.
Chills of excitement shoot down my spine when I start to think about the next generation of medical tech. Devices will be designed with human interaction at their core, and body health metric interpretation around the periphery. Instead of a distraction that forces physicians to use a system that wasn’t built for healthcare in the first place, the medical devices of the future will empower physicians to do their jobs better. I hope corporations, like Epic, IBM and others, place human to human interaction as a major priority for their future development of devices and software.
Technology like iPad or Google Glass, are steps in the right direction. Tablet computers have no stand or keyboard to restrict position, so a physician could theoretically use a tablet in clinic to share the EMR with the patient in front of them. The patient could even assist the physician with entering information in the waiting room before the consult. Google glass is a new prototype device, built by the search giant, that acts very much like a pair of glasses. In the corner of the frames, in-view of the wearer, is a small crystal that displays information to the user when relevant, based on voice commands. This technology has interesting potential because health metrics could be brought into view of the physician, without the physician taking their eyes off the patient. Human interaction is front and centre, while health data input and analysis is kept to the periphery.
These examples are a start, but more medical tech that places the patient-physician interaction as a priority, is needed. The medical gadget boom is starting to gain momentum, with tech giants like Apple and Google jumping on board with bio sensors for their next products. I am excited to see what ‘silicon valley’ develops in the near future, but I hope they remember we are not machines, but human beings who need to communicate!
To read more on medicine, technology, and the future of both, visit my blog @ williamparker.ca
