It might give the idea of being instinctual that the major apprehension when it comes to systems’ interoperability for healthcare organizations, is the authenticity of the data. There are many questions and concerns that emerge such as whether all the information made it across, or did all the data parse into the right place? And certainly, all these questions are extremely significant. But a frequently unheeded factor for accomplishing and accessing the interoperability initiatives is user experience.
Bearing in mind that healthcare providers and physicians come in the category of those users who are the toughest ones to deal with in the IT space—provided their intelligentsia, track of performance, and high anticipations—it’s critical to explore and examine the workflow, surveying these users prior to introducing new technology. Or, concerning that issue, asking them if they seriously consider any modification to their current workflow and its development.
User experience includes the workflow, access event, and demonstration of a provided dataset to the end user. The objective here is to provide such a perfect user experience that it isn’t identified as an experience at all. The data must be highly valued, and the procedure to acquire the data so effortless, that there is no opposition to adopting the changes.
It is a fact that most of the technologies are not this much unassertive, nor well-established. It is most important for the healthcare it consulting firms like us while playing our role in healthcare technology adoption and implementation to go for minimizing the obstacles to smooth adoption of the new technology. More than half of the work that is related to an interoperability project is linking numerous different systems to merge into a single or at least pared down review of a patient, disease, any other profile being targeted. Apart from the back-end efforts, the knowledge we gained through many years of experience and the several clients we have served, if the users are faced with an unfair burden and complicated workflows then we are dead in the water on achieving an interoperability go-live off to a feasible start.
Securing an Investment for Interoperability Initiatives
The presumed value of a partnership and summarized presentation that is essential to interoperability can be a hard sell for a few healthcare organizations, and we understand this. Even though coming to the conclusion that the advantage is comprehended and accepted, how a healthcare organization is anticipated to view or access the merged data is as crucial as their acceptance of the combined data as a valuable asset. We can highlight the significance and sagacity of a patient data that involves the extent of information from the associated public databases, resident ambulatory facilities, and/or responsive healthcare systems that have reached to the agreement that interoperability is a must-have initiative for their joint patient population. Once the importance of this interoperability initiative is established to the physicians, we have to now call their attention to the important nature of this inclusive data in relation to the new workflow they are taking into consideration.
Just once, look at it in this way: the more a patient data is made available to the healthcare providers, the more liability will be on the physicians. We can exclaim the advantages of population health and provide proofs of positive results linked to interoperable healthcare systems for the whole day. But if we overlook the apprehensions of the very individuals who are being requested to take that responsibility to the end, the main experimentation related to it, complete care plans with interruptions and encountered with whines and push-backs. This doesn’t indicate a personality disorder amongst the physicians, rather it is a user experience problem that must be dealt with effectively.
How to Address the User Experience Problems with Interoperability
To understand the problems the end users (healthcare providers) face in interoperability adoption, the projects sponsors and technical assistance must see through their eyes. We have to relate to the end users to understand the burdens of liability, schedule, demand, and data excess, and only this way we can realize the reason why any additional clicks or action stages are considered to be so burdensome. According to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), the most important factor of accomplishing interoperability is adoption and optimization. And through our experience we understand that the adoption factor is like dead in the water if you bring in any new clicks more than three to the workflow of the healthcare providers, or worse, you introduce a new portal.
Understand your end user, offer your support to them, and recognize that the still-indistinguishable understanding of interoperability to progress public health outcomes seems to be out-of-the-way and be optimistic. It’s not possible to sell interoperability on the philanthropical qualities alone. But given that the workflow is responsive and the user experience is effortless, then it is possible to get the interoperability adoption on a such a large scope to rationalize the required expenses and resources to your healthcare system.
