It’s no secret that healthcare has a history of lagging behind in regard to adopting technology that other industries adopt early. Prime examples are the barcodes and scanners in use at grocery stores since the 1960s just coming into most hospitals in the last decade or two to track IVs and other supplies, or the geofencing technology that has been used in advertising and real estate for years finally starting to appear in hospitals to improve workflow and limit theft. But why, in these days of tight budgets and cost reduction, isn’t healthcare more actively taking a hard look at technologies that could save big bucks?

“There’s lots of regulatory compliance,” said Shirley Golen, director of global healthcare strategy and solutions marketing for Splunk. Splunk’s business is to delve into machine data to make sense of it and make it usable for a variety of customers. And Big Data is another technology that healthcare has lagged behind on.

While regulatory hurdles may be something people don’t want to jump over, Golen thinks there are some other potential reasons for the slow adoption of new technology in healthcare — it’s about the individuals involved and the numerous stakeholders. “For the longest time, physicians were the be-all and end-all controlling stakeholders. But there’s a growing open-mindedness today because consumers and patients are taking healthcare matters into their own hands due to rising deductibles, which cause them to look into price transparency or the brand reputation of institutions and what they have to offer,” she said.

There’s also the fact that many of the clinicians moving into the field today represent a generational shift. For some, they don’t recall a time without technology at their fingertips and rather than familiarity breeding contempt, it’s breeding comfort, as these younger clinicians are easily able to navigate different apps and devices.

Golen does point out that the clinicians slow to adopt new technology probably aren’t against it because of (or solely due to) the stress of learning how to use the latest gadget, but more likely, because they want to keep the focus on the patient and if the technology isn’t already second-nature, it could prove more a hindrance than a help to that goal.

However, if a ramping up of hospital closures are any indication, it’s time to put that concern aside. Reimbursement pressures will continue to push the need to see as many patients as possible in a shorter period of time and provide proper treatment to eliminate or greatly reduce readmission rates. That could mean instead of tech reducing the human experience, it’ll become the only way to save it by allowing some streamlining to occur, giving clinicians valuable moments back to interact with patients.

Big data will also offer a lifeline. It’s the power behind the shift that’s already underway to move from treatment to prevention.
According to Golen, some of the pieces are finally falling into place. Interoperability, for instance, is in a better spot she says. “There’s more pressure now from governmental forces to truly enable interoperability. FHIR and HL7 are widely being adopted now. We’re working with a couple of the large EMR vendors and some large Healthcare Delivery Organizations to achieve that interoperability.”

ICD-10 is also starting to pay off by minimizing variations with coding input she says. And there are a number of benefits that delivers, not the least of which, of course, is improving the processing of reimbursements by offering greater detail and increased ability to accommodate new technologies and procedures.

In another case of supermarkets leading the way for healthcare, hospitals are looking at more ways to automate processes, especially the patient experience. Things like patient privacy or monitoring of access to patient records can be automated. With the constant news stories of major data breaches, eliminating security errors is crucial. Golen says there are solutions available that are inexpensive and user friendly, requiring minimal staff commitment and not a deep education in the technology.

She does recommend that the IT team appoint a “champion” in order to share the value that’s been derived from their efforts. With every dollar spend being scrutinized, the ability to justify costs, or better yet, show how a dollar spent was two dollars saved, will prevent cuts to a team that’s making a facility money by saving money.

The return-on-investment may be hard to determine, but sometimes clear cases will appear. Golen gives an example, “A large HDO, mainly using Splunk for security, was having difficulty with a medical device line. Devices were constantly failing. The HDO was trying to determine if they’d need to make a multimillion-dollar upgrade to replace the equipment. Reviewing the data, we found what they needed was an operational process change in the way they managed the equipment. It turns out, the device wasn’t being recharged at the end of the nurses’ shifts. Change management was all it took to solve the problem.”