Why is the industry making Health IT so complicated?

“Just because you watch a Bruce Lee movie doesn’t mean you can do karate.”

I think about this line a lot.  There are so many people introducing health tech solutions who have never practiced medicine.  They miss the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the day-to-day realities of the practice of medicine and expect us to adapt to technology, rather than the technology working with us or better yet for us.  Why can’t it be like my life outside of the office—where every piece of technology adapts to what I need, rather than what it needs from me.

The introduction of EMRs was billed as the holy grail of tech integration for medical professionals.  Instead, it’s become cumbersome, difficult to implement and use, and drives a wedge between the doctor and patient.  This wedge is further magnified by the cost structure to implement and maintain this technology in a medical practice. Instead, at MediSprout, we focused on making the physician and patient relationship the focal point and built the technology around them recognizing that access to that doctor-patient interaction is where the real value is in healthcare.

Let’s make the technology work for us.  Let’s take all of the hours that we would normally spend chasing callbacks, lawyers, insurers, etc. and get paid for that time.  Let’s find ways to make our offices more efficient—seeing the most urgent care needs in the office and the less critical patients by video at a scheduled time.  Telehealth is a powerful tool for a practice—to reconnect with patients, increase revenue for valuable time spent and make sure that the most critical patients can get in to see us before it becomes an emergency.  Please join me on my quest to change the way we all practice medicine.

-Sam