4 ms·

I feel like technology could very easily solve this eventually

jolux 2y ago
Only if you think it's possible to get all of the information in someone's head out of their head without consuming significantly more of their time and energy.
ramraj07 2y ago
Quite possibly one of the worst instances of “let me solve this problem with some code” I’ve heard.
Zenzero 2y ago
If you find some problem that plagues millions of very smart people, and your thought is "technology could very easily solve this", the first thing you should ask yourself is what you're missing.
- zelphirkalt 2y ago
  The problems are aversion to technology in places, unwillingness to adopt new (human) protocol/processes, entrenched proprietary technology, that does not adhere to standardized formats. Say you want to save a report for a patient for the next shift. That report needs to enter a computer system. If there is a system for that, it will most likely be a very expensive overpriced proprietary solution with expensive support contract, instead of something that has an open and intelligent format, that could be read by simply any software. The companies behind the tools will paint themselves as "specialists" for medical technology and do everything to dig a moat, at the cost of lives and they will avoid standards, as that will make their overpriced solution replaceable.
  - AllegedAlec 2y ago
    https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
  - cmiles74 2y ago
    I have to disagree on the "aversion to technology" point. It's something I've heard ever since I started working in software development, this isn't isolated to healthcare. For sure, there is always some resistance to the extra work of learning something new. In my experience over many years, it's easy to overcome this resistance by showing clear improvement achieved by the new process, whatever it might be (change in order of process steps, new paper from, new software, etc.) After working in healthcare (mid sized hospital), there is a big problem with pressure from administration that often makes little to no sense to those whose work is changing. I think a lot of this comes from weird incentives that maybe make sense in terms of short term business gain but, perhaps, are not worth the disruption to so many people's day-to-day work. Lastly, in the field of enterprise software and healthcare in particular, I agree that many of the technical solutions are not great. There's a lot of resistance to changing software tools simply because people have changed so often and the tools are so poor. Often these tools do not come close to the promised improvement.
  - Zenzero 2y ago
    > The problems are aversion to technology in places, unwillingness to adopt new (human) protocol/processes, entrenched proprietary technology, that does not adhere to standardized formats. It is not. This is a classic example of assuming the problem exists within the realm of your current understanding. The stereotype of people in medical roles not wanting/liking/understanding technology is wrong. What we don't like is the god awful technology we are handed because the work hasn't been done to understand how we work. THAT technology is not worth learning or caring about. As someone who has rounded patients over many times, the problem is the extensive amount of information that is ingested into establishing a cohesive clinical picture of a patient, then continually adjusting the degree of confidence in numerous facets and levels of the case. Then it all gets dumped into the heads of the next group of people. So people in tech develop these programs to help track the information. Yet they fail to grasp that there are many situations where the conclusions are based on a web of contingencies that operate on disparate time series, are affected by a wide net of things not directly reflected in empirical data, and it is completely impractical for me to continuously update the intermediate changes to my conclusions just so your software can know what's going on. The more that people try to construct a UI that captures the complexity of what can be noted in a case, the less usable it becomes. Even then, they still undershoot the level of depth needed to reflect what doctors are tracking in their heads. You may think it's enough to have someone input the hematologic data as the results and their ranges. You fail to track that my interpretation of those results is contextualized by the fact that nurse Martha was on the floor and likely dropped the ball on how promptly the ABG was run, and that certain staffing dynamics affected how much weight I give certain subjective criteria. In rounds, a simple eyebrow raise can be enough to convey to the next shift a mutually known dynamic that affects how information should be interpreted. Asking us to spell all of that out in your "new technology solution" won't happen. It is a waste of everyone's time and social dynamics will prohibit it. I could go on and on with a variety of other examples, but I don't have the time or desire to do so. My point is that the tech hubris is wasted effort. While you sit there thinking you need to teach the "tech illiterate doctors" how to follow matters of process, we see you as someone that has been asked to develop a more effective tool, and you hand us a fisher-price screwdriver and insult us for not finding it useful. Like the other comment said, https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
    - 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

Only if you think it's possible to get all of the information in someone's head out of their head without consuming significantly more of their time and energy.

ramraj07 2y ago

Quite possibly one of the worst instances of “let me solve this problem with some code” I’ve heard.

Zenzero 2y ago

If you find some problem that plagues millions of very smart people, and your thought is "technology could very easily solve this", the first thing you should ask yourself is what you're missing.

zelphirkalt 2y ago
The problems are aversion to technology in places, unwillingness to adopt new (human) protocol/processes, entrenched proprietary technology, that does not adhere to standardized formats. Say you want to save a report for a patient for the next shift. That report needs to enter a computer system. If there is a system for that, it will most likely be a very expensive overpriced proprietary solution with expensive support contract, instead of something that has an open and intelligent format, that could be read by simply any software. The companies behind the tools will paint themselves as "specialists" for medical technology and do everything to dig a moat, at the cost of lives and they will avoid standards, as that will make their overpriced solution replaceable.
- AllegedAlec 2y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
- cmiles74 2y ago
  I have to disagree on the "aversion to technology" point. It's something I've heard ever since I started working in software development, this isn't isolated to healthcare. For sure, there is always some resistance to the extra work of learning something new. In my experience over many years, it's easy to overcome this resistance by showing clear improvement achieved by the new process, whatever it might be (change in order of process steps, new paper from, new software, etc.) After working in healthcare (mid sized hospital), there is a big problem with pressure from administration that often makes little to no sense to those whose work is changing. I think a lot of this comes from weird incentives that maybe make sense in terms of short term business gain but, perhaps, are not worth the disruption to so many people's day-to-day work. Lastly, in the field of enterprise software and healthcare in particular, I agree that many of the technical solutions are not great. There's a lot of resistance to changing software tools simply because people have changed so often and the tools are so poor. Often these tools do not come close to the promised improvement.
- Zenzero 2y ago
  > The problems are aversion to technology in places, unwillingness to adopt new (human) protocol/processes, entrenched proprietary technology, that does not adhere to standardized formats. It is not. This is a classic example of assuming the problem exists within the realm of your current understanding. The stereotype of people in medical roles not wanting/liking/understanding technology is wrong. What we don't like is the god awful technology we are handed because the work hasn't been done to understand how we work. THAT technology is not worth learning or caring about. As someone who has rounded patients over many times, the problem is the extensive amount of information that is ingested into establishing a cohesive clinical picture of a patient, then continually adjusting the degree of confidence in numerous facets and levels of the case. Then it all gets dumped into the heads of the next group of people. So people in tech develop these programs to help track the information. Yet they fail to grasp that there are many situations where the conclusions are based on a web of contingencies that operate on disparate time series, are affected by a wide net of things not directly reflected in empirical data, and it is completely impractical for me to continuously update the intermediate changes to my conclusions just so your software can know what's going on. The more that people try to construct a UI that captures the complexity of what can be noted in a case, the less usable it becomes. Even then, they still undershoot the level of depth needed to reflect what doctors are tracking in their heads. You may think it's enough to have someone input the hematologic data as the results and their ranges. You fail to track that my interpretation of those results is contextualized by the fact that nurse Martha was on the floor and likely dropped the ball on how promptly the ABG was run, and that certain staffing dynamics affected how much weight I give certain subjective criteria. In rounds, a simple eyebrow raise can be enough to convey to the next shift a mutually known dynamic that affects how information should be interpreted. Asking us to spell all of that out in your "new technology solution" won't happen. It is a waste of everyone's time and social dynamics will prohibit it. I could go on and on with a variety of other examples, but I don't have the time or desire to do so. My point is that the tech hubris is wasted effort. While you sit there thinking you need to teach the "tech illiterate doctors" how to follow matters of process, we see you as someone that has been asked to develop a more effective tool, and you hand us a fisher-price screwdriver and insult us for not finding it useful. Like the other comment said, https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
  - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]