How Has Health Tech Harmed The Patient Experience?

It might not be an exaggeration that technology has transformed the health industry as it has made it easy to analyze data and automation of patient solutions, but its implementation without the integration of every step and strategically selection of the right tools is causing harm to patients’ experience with health care services.

Harming Aspects of Health Tech

Health tech is harming patient experience and trust in health care services in multiple ways. Here are some of the critical aspects in this regard.

Complexities of design

It is a known thing that technology is a complex thing, and when it comes to the medical field, it becomes more complicated to understand. Although health technology is designed to provide safe patient solutions and better control over their healthcare aspects, design complexities are causing issues for patients to get the most out of it. Health care experts believe that there are a lot of technological tools that can cause ease in health care, but if and only if they are designed for common users. These tools might be used by people in their 60s and 70s as people of these ages face many health issues, and these technologies are not designed by keeping such patients in mind.

The literacy level of the patient is also a significant aspect to be considered in the formation of the EHR tools and systems. Patients with higher education can easily use these complex tools to take control of their health care, but patients with lower education cannot understand complexities, which is also one of the significant ways in which health technology is harming patients’ experience.

Wedges among doctors and patients

In the medical field, the relationship between doctor and patient is considered a critical thing that enhances the opportunities for better care for patients and gives more confidence to doctors in diagnosis. Patients always look for consultation and personal interaction with doctors and health service providers. But when it comes to automated procedures and doctors acting according to provided information instead of interacting with patients, it always causes a negative impact on patients that result in leaving the visits.

Health technology is causing over-reliance on complex data that requires much time and effort to understand the health conditions of patients, and they could not find time to interact with the respective patient. According to studies and health care experts, patients feel more comfortable with doctors or service providers who know them personally, but increased use of EHRs and automated documentation procedures have caused wedges. According to recent surveys, any physician who spends one hour with patients face to face is now paying an additional two hours on dealing with EHR systems and patient engagement solutions are one of the major reasons behind increasing wedges among patients and doctors.

E-Medication

Increasing the use of technology in the healthcare industry is also leading patients towards e-medication. People do not bother to visit doctors but just make a call to get advice for medicines. According to medical experts, it is essential to get a complete diagnosis that includes different aspects before getting any medication. Increasing the use of EHR technology and healthcare phone application diagnosis is becoming a secondary thing, and wrongly used medicines are causing complex health issues.

Shortsighted solutions

Many of the health care tools introduced by startups, technology giants, and health systems provide solutions for patients' specific scenarios and challenges. Still, they do not offer the solution for all patients’ needs. Modern healthcare is now driven by the concept of specialization, which is the primary reason behind these tools’ shortsightedness. The lack of communication among patients and healthcare providers can cause numerous issues. For example, a patient requires surgery and his surgeon is unaware of the other health issues that might cause severe problems in the surgical procedures. Shortsighted health care tools and applications that deal with specific issues harm patients’ satisfaction with the provider’s services and damage the credibility of service providers in the market.

Data Breaches

Patient data safety is one of the most important aspects that help providers to maintain patients’ trust in their services. With complete reliance on technology, service providers can face critical issues with data loss. It has been witnessed that a lot of times, systems get crashed or hacked, and such things cause service interruptions that cause difficulties for service providers and shake patients’ trust in them. According to healthcare experts, it is impossible talking about health care without considering data security. There are numerous examples that patients get letters from organizations that their data has been compromised or breached.

Final Words

Although health technology is utilized to improve patients’ experience with helpful patient solutions for healthcare, the aspects mentioned above of health tech cannot be denied. These aspects of healthcare technology make providers vulnerable to losing patients’ trust in their services and harming their healthcare experience.