Digital Health Needs to Embrace Clinical Complexity

This article discusses the usability of digital systems in healthcare, and the issues and opportunities that exist in this space.

Jim Ritchie

Summary

 

Introduction

 

  • Frustrations are often expressed around the difficulty of using digital systems in healthcare, compared to say other commercial products made by companies such as Apple or Google.

  • The abstract notion of perfect usability being an absolute requirement lessens the value of incremental progress and sets such an unachievable goal that there is a risk of devaluing any improvements made along the way…these are some thoughts which I hope helps to explain my view and and offer something more constructive in the debate.

 

Issues

 

  • Issue 1: Healthcare is delivered in a complex adaptive system
  • Issue 2: Expert staff need autonomy (and patients need them to have it)
  • Issue 3: Not every Apple / Google product is perfect
  • Issue 4: Apple still offers training

 

Opportunities

 

  • Opportunity 1: Correlation is not causation and usability is not just simplicity
  • Opportunity 2: Beware the Merchants of Complexity
  • Opportunity 3: Spend more time on user testing
  • Opportunity 4: Liberate data and users from monolithic solutions

 

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