In a recent post, I talked about an innovative EMR idea. I
thought for this post I would back up and talk about innovation. Perhaps I can
discuss my definition of innovation because the more I look around the less
innovation I see.
The dictionary definition of innovation (according to the all-knowing
Google) is a create something new. I don’t
like that definition. I think that is weak and limiting. Something can be new
and completely useless or just plain badly designed. Would that be innovative? If it is,
then I think innovative is a very sad word. To be innovative, something needs
to be better, but not necessarily new.
For example, if we look at the iPod again, it was not a new
concept, really. The iPod was a portable music player. That was not innovative.
Walkmans were portable music players long before iPod existed. The innovation came in the
fact that iPod was better than what came before it.
With that, I’d like to recommend a better definition of
innovation. Innovation is a way of doing something that is better than anything
that already exists. Innovation, therefore, can be an improvement on an
existing concept and not necessarily something entirely new… it’s just better. An
innovation should meet an unmet need, improve function, communication, and/or operations,
etc.
In the healthcare IT world, there is very little innovation.
For example, all EMRs do the same thing and generally that same thing is
burdensome in many different ways. That is why healthcare information
technology (IT) adoption is still relatively low – even with government
incentives. The biggest problem in all of healthcare IT is that the current
technology is not innovative (e.g. it is not an improvement).
Now, I am not
contradicting my previous posts here. There are some great ideas out there but I
think the execution is still WAY off. I will share a story with you so you can see
why I would say such a thing.
Some time ago, I did a site visit with a client where I
shadowed my product’s end-users for a full day. The purpose of a site visit is
so that I, as the product manager, can see what users need (because often they
cannot really explain it clearly). During this visit, something very important
happened and I had an epiphany. The nurse I was shadowing stopped her work to ask
me how to perform a task on the system. The solution to her question was easy
for me and the nurse was a little embarrassed so, she excused her question by
saying “I am just no good with technical stuff”. What happened next struck me.
Then, the nurses cell phone vibrated and she picked up her
iPhone to answer. A few second in to her call she said let me check the bank
and I will call you back and let you know. After hanging up, she used her
iPhone to log on to her bank account. Then, she logged in to her email from her
desktop computer, clicked on a hyperlink led to a product on Amazon.com. She
proceeded to buy the product online, then return the call to say that she had
bought the product. In a matter of 3 minutes, she used multiple technologies.
Not tech savvy, hu???
As a good product manager, I had answer some very painful
questions. For example, why is my software harder for her to understand than
iPhone, email, bank, and Amazon.com? Then the really important question – the expensive
question in the software world…. Why does my software requires weeks of end-user
training and ongoing support when non-tech savvy people download and use apps,
bank websites, and online retail with little to no training?
The answer is simple. Healthcare IT has forgotten about intuitive
end-user design. I will admit, healthcare is complicated…but so is banking. If
we want to improve adoption of IT in healthcare we need to simplify. That's right KISS, keep it simple, stupid. To do
that, healthcare IT needs to include non-tech savvy users in the design and
development process and in usability testing. I completely understand that such
a proposal can be expensive to implement initially, but is it really more
expensive weeks long implementation, ongoing support, and redesign after
redesign in hopes of eventually getting it right?
Poor design in healthcare software is the problem preventing
adoption. If we want to move healthcare in to the 21st century in
terms of technology, we really need to take a good long look at the technology
that the self-proclaimed non-techie people are using. When a healthcare IT
vendor finally comes up with a software that does not take months to implement or years to really understand, technology
adoption in healthcare will skyrocket. Remember, innovation is not necessarily something
new.. it is something better. Simplifying something that is complicated is
better… it is innovation.
(As an amusing side note… I keep referencing iPhone in posts
but I am an actually Andriod user haha.)
