The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 3 (June 2014) | Page 42

A Clinician's Guide: How to Enhance Adoption and Diffusion...

A Clinician’s Guide: How to
Enhance Adoption and Diffusion of
Technology in Healthcare
By Dr Alexander Graham
Healthcare provision across the world
faces unprecedented challenges in the
modern day, with spiralling costs, aging
populations and political pressures
impacting on the quality and quantity of
care given. As a result, front-line staff are
consistently being asked to do more with
less.
Having practiced as a doctor in the UK,
I have seen the relationship first hand
between healthcare professionals and
technology. My anecdotal view, in the
years I spent as a student and doctor,
is that the vast majority of technology
hinders rather than helps clinicians in
their day-to-day work. But we have the
technology to put a man on the moon so
why can’t we reliably improve workflow,
communication and outcomes in hospitals and clinics? Why is healthcare as a
system so reticent to accept new technologies that could improve workers’ conditions and improve patients’ lives?
The answer is unfortunately a complex
one with many precipitating factors but
if technology companies can understand
some of the main barriers to adoption
and diffusion then they can mitigate
them with a bespoke approach. It is possible to write whole books on this topic
but I shall concentrate on what I feel are
the three main barriers: culture, workflow and staff heterogeneity.

CULTURE

Healthcare professionals are frequently
bombarded with sales pitches from a
range of salespeople, from drug reps to
device manufacturers to IT professionals, often with a hard-selling, non-userfocused manner. The default setting
amongst an increasing majority of clinicians as a result of this is scepticism and
disenchantment (sometimes referred to
as ‘innovation fatigue’) such that when
the next painkiller, hip replacement or
software innovation comes along,
sellers will often start very much on

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June 2014

the back foot, even if the product or service is of high quality.
This means that the ‘pre-sales’ process
for technology is critical. Sellers need to
make a conscious and sustained effort to
develop personal relationships with the
people who will not only be their end
users but should become their clinical
champions in terms of driving forward
procurement and then adoption and diffusion. Senior clinicians will often sit on
the board of directors in hospitals and
assist in procurement of new technologies so this is a remarkably important step.

WORKFLOW

The representation of the day-to-day
lives of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals in the media and by
the general public is unfortunately often
far from the truth. It is impossible to
explain the workflow patterns of clinicians if you have not worked in a hospital or at least spent an extended amount
of time in clinical care before.
Technology will never be diffused within
a healthcare system if it is not intuitive,
easy to use and at least contributes to
making the day-to-day lives of professionals easier. To give you an idea of
the scale of some of the pressures that
workers can be put under, consider how
a hospital operates over a weekend. It is
regularly expected that 2-4 doctors will
be looking after somewhere in the region
of 400 patients, with the number of daily
tasks (blood result checking, ordering
scans, reviewing patients) in the hundreds. If you have a device or software
platform that requires excessive time
to use or creates superfluous data, it is
unlikely to last much past the first trial.
By walking the walk of your target
market, you will find numerous reflection points and nuances in the system
that you must use in either developing
or refining your product or service. By
overcoming these mini-hurdles, end-user
engagement will be that much greater.

STAFF HETEROGENEITY

Analysing the workflow patterns of your
target market will hopefully help assist
in the realisation that you cannot group
all doctors or all nurses in one homogenous group. The work of an emergency
consultant compared to an orthopaedic
surgeon or the work of a ward nurse to a
nurse consultant will be virtually incomparable with different working patterns,
environments and stakeholder interactions present.
As a result it is imperative to build in flexibility to your product or service such that
individuals’ concerns, ideas and differences can be allowed for. One of the most
successful companies I have seen recently
has a fully bespoke software application
for patient data gathering so each department or professional can tailor the interface to their exact requirements rather
than having a top-down implementation.
Flexibility in your product will generate a
much larger potential user base.

CONCLUSION

If you do not have a bridge between the
technology that is being produced and
the end-users on the front line, then your
products and services will never reach
their potential. Fully understanding the
environments in which your target markets operate is crucial to any commercial
success and imperative for companies to
understand.
Dr Alex Graham is a medical doctor by
background, having trained in London before
entering the business world. He is currently a
founding partner at AbedGraham, a research
and strategy consultancy
which
assists global IT
corporates to navigate the clinical,
organisational and
commercial complexities of the
UK’s National
Health
Service
(NHS). n