After a long and stressful day, you finally sit down, kick back, and start up the new video game you picked up. A black screen accompanies a sprawling medieval-inspired score and the rhythmic clacking of a horse speeding across a cobbled street. You wait. A white bar appears and then crawls slowly across the screen. Your eyelids grow heavier. As you get up to shut off the console, the screen changes to an armored knight riding his horse in circles without your guidance. A second later, the screen buzzes out, the music swells, and the game shuts off.

Now, imagine if the functionality of the software you use affected patients in the same way as a broken video game.

As the sun sets on a Friday night in the 1990s, voices and explosions from a movie trailer continue to loop in the background as you rush past a towering yellow gumball machine and prepackaged popcorn buckets. You tap your foot against the fading carpeted floor in nervous anticipation as you scan the brightly painted shelves for the newest release on VHS.

Video stores are dead. One of the major reasons why the rental video store market collapsed was their inability to adapt to evolving technology and customer needs. That being said, there are certain lessons that we can learn from the paradigm shift in the home-video viewing industry. Applying these lessons when choosing an EHR will keep your patients engaged and coming back to your practice.

In late 1996, a group of Compaq and Netcentric executives gathered at an office park outside Houston and gave birth to a new idea: cloud computing. Technology would never be the same.

According to MIT Technology Review, Compaq’s 50-page internal analysis of ideas discussed at that meeting accurately predicted that enterprise software would transform into cloud services and that the future meant “application software is no longer a feature of the hardware — but of the Internet.”

Today, cloud computing fuels all kinds of businesses growth. Successful enterprises routinely align IT “infostructure” with business goals. If solutions aren’t nimble, scalable, secure, convenient, and low cost — they aren’t solutions at all.

During an April 2018 TED Talk in Vancouver, British Columbia, neuroscientist Poppy Crum, chief scientist at Dolby Laboratories, posed a question that should resonate with anyone who works in the fields of healthcare and technology: “What happens when technology knows more about us than we do?”

Crum is among the featured speakers at next week’s Health 2.0 Annual Conference in Santa Clara, California. Whether we like it or not, she told her TED Talk audience, advances in technology mean that we are “already sharing parts of our inner lives.”

One of the tasks of a healthcare IT company is to develop ways to creatively respond to the realities of our information-saturated age, ensuring that patients’ personal and medical histories are protected while enabling providers to use medical data to improve lives.

To thrive in today’s healthcare environment, practices need to understand how a rapidly changing market is making a subtle shift from patient-centric care to creating a customer-centric experience.

Thanks to brands such as Uber and Amazon, today’s healthcare customers are more tech-savvy and connected than previous generations. They expect instant results, delivered with five-star service. For example, according to Google, searches for “open now” are increasing while searches for “store hours” are declining.

The Economist calls it "time poverty" — the notion that there’s not enough time to do all the work we need to do. Against that backdrop, healthcare providers still need to find ways to connect.

In his classic “Economics in One Lesson,” Henry Hazlitt wrote: “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” ¹

Change “economics” to “healthcare,” and you have a useful guide for medical practices challenged to deliver quality care while controlling costs: Think about long-term consequences for all.

Whether you’re cutting into a juicy steak or biting into a crisp apple, food safety metrics were established to keep you safe and feeling healthy. Meeting all of these requirements can feel overwhelming, so tools have been created to make the process easier and more efficient for food and beverage manufacturers.

The same could be said about quality measures in the healthcare system.

Dinosaurs get a bad rap. Conventional wisdom says they were cold-blooded, had small brains, and were incapable of adapting to rapid climate change following a cataclysmic asteroid impact. The lessons for businesses? Move faster. Work smarter. Adapt.

But let’s face it: Keeping up with the rapidly changing climate in the world of healthcare is hard. Regulations change, reporting requirements grow, and healthcare consumers demand high-quality, convenient, and affordable care — or they’ll potentially take their business elsewhere.

What’s a practice to do? How about learning from the dinosaurs!

As organizations are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with their Electronic Health Record (EHR), many are beginning to make the switch for better healthcare IT. A recent Medical Economics’ study found 62% of practices have already switched EHRs at least once. 

In a new EHR, the organizations are seeking increased efficiency and productivity, advanced functionality, unified solutions, and data analytics. 

But ensuring success throughout the implementation process requires first understanding your practice’s actual needs and then working with a healthcare IT partner capable of meeting those needs quickly, efficiently, and affordably. 

The healthcare industry is undergoing dramatic efforts to improve the delivery of care. Lots of changes have already occurred that have expanded access to quality care. Now, the challenge is to shift the conversation to focus on optimizing health that emphasizes patient-centered care.

A recent report by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) determined consumers should remain at the center of care to keep them engaged and healthy. CMS describes an optimal patient-provider relationship as one that “[gives] consumers access to their records, [enabling] them to be more active participants in their care, making care more person-centered.”

Many tools, but challenges persist

Each year brings new advances in medical technology and new understanding of challenges in healthcare. The progress of science is so visible that it’s easy for physicians, patients, and public-policy experts to believe all the tools necessary to build a healthier society are already in hand. 

In reality, many difficult and complex challenges remain. Conditions that have clear, adverse impacts on the quality of life — including diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and poor nutrition — remain widespread. 

Each year brings new technologies and breakthroughs in healthcare. But to ensure accurate understanding among patients, healthcare providers need to have and share realistic perspectives on technological advances. In short, what’s real and what’s hype?

The ABCD’s of Healthcare Progress

The following four areas have seen real progress, are likely to see more, and are directly or indirectly promoting better care and outcomes.