Tech alone does not make clinicians’ lives easier

It goes without saying that healthtech has a vital role to play in supporting health and social care delivery across the globe - particularly amid current pressures . From initiatives conducting cutting-edge genetic disease research to remote cardiac rehab platforms and cancer care apps , technology is helping push the boundaries of modern healthcare and tackle the challenges posed by evolving patient demand. However sadly, too often, fantastic health tech solutions fail to take hold long-term or deliver their desired impact.?

From my own experience as both a doctor and health tech innovator, I’ve found that this usually comes down to implementation. When tech that is, in theory, poised to deliver genuine improvement is simply parachuted in, it is ultimately likely to fail. To be successful, solutions have to be service-driven. Tech that is not targeted to serve the specific needs of its end users, or is introduced without sufficient support and onboarding, will not only fail to deliver genuine improvement, but can make it harder for organisations to deliver safe and high quality patient care.

Working closely with our NHS partners over the past 7 years at Patchwork Health , we understand the importance of being service-led at every stage of product development and implementation. Below, I share 3 of the most important ways we’ve found help to achieve this, in the hope that our experiences and advice may support other health tech start-ups on their journey:?

1. Putting end-users at the heart of design

It may sound obvious, but to build a solution that truly works, it needs to be designed around the needs of its end-users and rooted in the lived experience of the clinicians and patients it's aiming to support. So it’s essential to talk to your end-users from day one to gain a true understanding of how they work and the complex issues they are facing. This will help you to deliver practical solutions which have been built to accommodate and address the nuanced pain points and needs they are trying to meet.?

2. Understanding the complexities of NHS infrastructure

When building technology solutions for the NHS, it’s absolutely vital to acknowledge the complexity of the services and structures into which it must fit. Too often, solutions are designed in ways that do not effectively integrate into existing NHS systems or workflows. This makes it difficult for organisations to effectively use them and reduces adoption, often leading teams to revert back to their original ways of working. Tech leaders must understand the importance of interoperability and build solutions in a way that helps overcome existing siloes and barriers to collaboration. By offering tech that can integrate seamlessly and be adopted easily into current processes and systems, you’ll ensure your product is fit for NHS use from the word ‘go,’ and relieves already stretched teams from manual workload, rather than adding to it.

3. Prioritising comprehensive onboarding?

For healthcare staff with extremely busy workloads, there is very limited time to grapple with complicated new digital systems. So health tech teams must provide comprehensive onboarding support to ensure smooth adoption, long-term engagement and sustainable results. Staff need efficient and simple, while still comprehensive, training which enables them to begin using the solution within their day-to-day work, without any additional burden to their workload. By prioritising training and intuitive tech functionality, founders can make sure that their solution has the best chance of delivering genuine, sustainable improvement. Solutions that are parachuted in without this are much more likely to be discarded. The product is only one part of the solution - the service and support surrounding it are indispensable.?

Being service-led is absolutely essential for tech leaders creating and delivering healthcare tools to the NHS. Tech for the sake of tech is pointless; putting end-users front and centre at every stage of product design and implementation is key to building a solution that truly works. We must prioritise the needs of users and support them throughout every stage of implementation and beyond to provide real, impactful solutions that last.