W H AT ’ S YO U R O P I N I O N ?
Unlocking the potential of digitalization by purposeful redesign of clinical processes Increased digitalization of clinical workflows can help caregivers in their clinical documentation, decision making, and interactions with clinical specialists. Better informed nurses and physicians can contribute to better clinical outcomes and experience more facetime with their patients. Existing processes might require a redesign to unlock the full potential of digitalization or even avoid setbacks.
Ronald Graefe Digital Health Futurist
Today‘s health systems face the Silver Tsunami caused by the aging population and the rise of chronic diseases. Addressing the rising demand is a challenge for established processes and the healthcare workforce across the continuum of care.
As a result, the cost of care explodes, and current staff shortages even increase further. Healthcare is an established industry that can benefit from further digitalization of the established processes. Digitalization, together with technological advancements, could help to lift the pressure of the healthcare workforce. Healthcare employees become more and more tech-savvy and value the digitalization options that can help: – increase the quality of care, – increase compliance, – increase Patient Experience, – increase staff satisfaction, and – reduce operational costs.
Digitalization may decrease the face time with a patient Intensive care units (ICU) are technology-rich by nature. The combined bedside devices connected to a single Patient
on an ICU can generate up to 200 data1 points per second. Still, some hospitals use paper documentation. The introduction of an electronic patient record could enable automated charting of all bedside device data. Let’s assume the nurse to patient ratio remains the same. Nurses could benefit from the efficiency increase by automation of essential documentation tasks. In daily practice, I often witnessed the opposite. Instead of the nurse spending more time with the patient, I observed her spending more time documenting than before. The reasons can be manifold and relate to cumbersome user interfaces, gaps in device interconnectivity, or poor onboarding of nurses. Another aspect is related to far advanced clinical documentation activities beyond their status quo to fulfill current Quality Assurance guidelines better or maintain double documentation instead of fetch-
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