A flick of a switch mentality...
Humans have an innate desire to make their lives easier… we see this in many forms and often the desired state revolves around achieving a desired outcome with the ‘flick of a switch’ or similar…
Simple tasks like getting a glass of water to drink or lighting a room can now all be achieved very easily by the ‘consumer’ of these products with the simple act of turning on a tap or flicking a light switch.
Of course, we know that behind the scenes, to get to the end state of safe uninterrupted electricity supply or free flowing clean water on demand, there is significant ‘behind the scenes’ work and engineering that must take place… however the average consumer does not care about this, they just want the result (their illuminated room or their cold glass of water)
That is not to trivialize what happens to get to the desired outcome, it's just as consumers, we want what we want; someone once used a phrase on me that resonated: ‘if I ask someone the time, I don’t want to know how the watch was made, I just want to know the time…’
Does this outcomes-only focus translate into the business context, specifically in technology?
My perspective on this as a consumer and someone working for a company who provides technology to life sciences organisations that is focused both on ‘data consumers’ and on ‘IT/Tech stakeholders’ is that it very much depends…
Automation is one of many buzzwords, if I was to boil this down to what this means to me as a consumer, then it goes back to the ‘flick of a switch mentality’… can I get what I want, when I want it with a ‘flick of a switch, or more appropriately a click of a mouse’…
When the answer is no… then as a consumer, this is when I start to ‘troubleshoot’ and work out why I can’t get to this state… For me, the greater the level of automation, the more seamless the experience, the less concerned I am about how the ‘watch is made’…
At eClinical solutions, I involve myself in discussions related to how data is consumed by lots of varied consumers of clinical data. I quickly realized that data consumption is a subjective topic, what one consumer loves, another can hate and vice versa. I also have learned that there are ‘technically focused’ consumers of data, who not only want to have a seamless end user experience, but they also want to understand ‘how the watch is made’, or in this context, how data is ingested, centralized, standardized and then consumed.
Will we ever get to a Utopian situation in clinical trials, whereby with a ‘flick of a switch’ as a consumer of clinical trial data, I can see data from any source, just like that…. I personally think we are close, and this will be a reality in the very near future.
I'm curious, if you're reading this and involved in clinical trials and working with data... what is your 'Utopian state' and how close are you to getting there?
Managing Director of ThermoFoam Spray Foam. My role is operational with focus on product development, marketing, technical services, system design, project management and materials distribution throughout the UK.
3 年For me, automation spells the end of the human race. It spells the end of the need to think and engage parts of our brain that are critical for the continuous development of the human race. Expect to see the dumbing down of humans over the next 100 years as they become accustomed to laziness, not having to get out their armchairs to survive and instead staying at home watching Loose Women all day whilst the automated world wipes their ass
Co-Founder & Director at Quick Car Finance
3 年Interesting read.
Experienced eClinical professional with a focus on Global Project Delivery and Client Success
3 年When all data has been automated and easily can be found in one place. How is waste identified? What data is truly relevant? How can this be identified with the click of a mouse?
Wicked Problem Wizard
3 年The question in my mind is "is the tool helping the process or getting in the way". I think everyone needs to understand where the data comes from and how it is made at a high level in order to use it. Democratizing data and making it approachable is always a benefit to everyone.
Work smarter not harder! Standards + Automation = Efficiency
3 年Great article Sam. Got me thinking. My utopia state is the transition from 'data as numbers' to 'knowledge as text'.