“the Human face of Digital transformation”
This new world emerging in this middle pandemic age is one where digital transformation has at last started to come of age . We have long anticipated that healthcare would start to catch up with the rest of the world and through the great catharsis of COVID, this is at last starting to happen. Digital transformation is here to stay, technologies are being deployed as mainstream solutions not merely as curious to explore the art of the possible, and the system is slowly but inexorably starting to change to become a more personalised system which aspires to improve care, manage life course conditions better and eventually improve outcomes and experience.
Not that we are anywhere we need to be in mid to late 2022, wherever you are in the globe. Systems are creaking, workforce is getting scarcer, and some would say getting more desperate to leave the service, and people are getting more impatient to see what we all know to be possible but somehow has not yet quite been delivered.
Despite the difficulties we all see in our interactions with the health system, there is a very good chance these will be overcome in time. The question is really not if they will be overcome but how long will it take us to do so. Clearly there are some impediments which are delaying the changes we need to see realised from a persistent resistance to alter the financial metrics that drive healthcare, to a diminishing and ageing workforce.
What is often at the heart of many of these impediments is resistance to the myriad of changes that are being deployed in our systems , often associated with digital transformation and clinicians are often, but not solely, identified as some of the more resistant cohorts to change.
This should come as no surprise. For example, clinicians have not as a body been particularly prominent in advocating digital transformation, although there are of course some very notable exceptions. They had rapid deployments, accelerated by covid, thrust upon them , often with less thought around how it would affect them and more thought around the technology that drove these changes. Perhaps the time is right to rebalance this emphasis somewhat as technology is now both advanced enough and deployed often enough for its effects to be largely predictable. What is not as predictable is the interaction of the human with technology. There are solutions to this, and it is within our power to deploy them and to better manage the “soft skills” we need to better assist people cope with the changes that technology. The challenge is walking the walk and actually suggesting practical solutions rather than merely identifying those problems exist.
Solutions do exist and some jurisdictions have been successful at delivering these. There is every opportunity for us to learn from each other and apply these learnings to our systems and we believe we can help you on this journey