To create thoughtful, patient-centered solutions to the growing number of health issues facing U.S. residents, physicians must be able to share their knowledge and take an active role in developing the technology that will help shape the practice in the future.
In an essay for VentureBeat, Christine Stock, MD, a professor of anesthesiology at Evanston, Ill.-based Northwestern University, urged technology companies and startups focused on improving the healthcare landscape to utilize physicians and their knowledge of the industry throughout the development process. To have physicians test products after they have already been built only leads to more frustration and confusion.
"Physicians across America feel that we were either left off the guest list or have been invited late to the party, too late to change things. We'd like to receive an invitation from you — the developers of digital healthcare tools — early in the development process. We want to help you help us help people. … My 70-member practice did [an] experiment … [where] we paid 50 percent of one physician's compensation for a year so that he could spend that time working with (and occasionally bullying) IT developers to create an EMR for our practice that would make sense in our clinical environment. It was expensive, but it worked. We have a tool that has become a prototype for our sort of practice and which the proprietor has cultivated across its larger user base … The story of transformative IT healthcare applications is in its early chapters. In fact, we are likely at the brink of significant technological breakthroughs. Think what artificial intelligence and machine learning can enable. Please ensure that the narrative of that story captures the physician's perspective. The tech community must be willing to engage early and to listen. And we physicians must be willing to meet the developmental challenges and share."
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