Technology to improve patient outcomes

Investing in technology can positively affect patient EXPERIENCE, but what about patient OUTCOMES?

There is little argument against the investment of technology to improve?patient experience. Technologies like online appointment booking, telemedicine, improvements in wayfinding, voice-activated calls in hospital rooms, and infotainment systems are just a few examples. The astute deployment of technologies can improve the?clinician experience?similarly. Using the correct device for the environment, having hardware supported by a robust network, identity management solutions for quick sign-on, and a well-implemented electronic medical record are all critical components of technology that improve the clinician experience (these also represent 2 of the IHI Quintuple aims, Enhancing the care experience and Care team well-being).

But what of patient care/outcomes???

Evidence shows that?Technologies supporting care?improve patient care by “supercharging” the clinical workflow. Examples include drug/drug interaction alerts, sepsis alerts, order coms, risk assessments, and driving clinical alerts. The key is that the clinical care is supported but still requires ACTION to improve care. Even with Sepsis Algorithms, Pharmacy alerts, surgical checklists and the like, never-events still happen. Humans are experts in developing workarounds without recognising the implications of their actions on patient care.

For the technology-supporting care to be effective, it must be deployed in concert with clinical teams and leveraging human factor principles. Alerts are actioned when the supporting technology is accurate and clinicians have bought into the need for a course correction.

Although the current fashion is to make everything “AI”, technologically-enabled care pre-dates these trends. It often relies on large data sets and processing considerable data loads in real time. A simple example is a fall risk score automatically triggering a specialist referral to a falls clinic. A more complex example would be automatically transcribed patient notes that combine physiological metrics, automatically complete medication reconciliation, and suggest medication/intervention based on pertinent research, clinical guidance, and patient feedback. The widespread use of computer vision in radiology is another example.

The balance between technology-supporting and technology-enabling care will shift to more autonomous enabling technologies where workflows are driven by data and not individual clinicians. The result will be the standardisation of care. While the personalisation of medicine is a trend, it is only possible on the foundations of standardised care.??

Hospital clinical informatics specialists should redouble their efforts to deploy technology-supported and technology-enabled care. Once well deployed, the evidence-based will grow to show that technology supports the clinician experience, patient experience, and improves patient outcomes.