In his talk (slides above) delivered yesterday at the South by Southwest event in Austin Texas, Tim O’Reilly used consumer technology examples such as the Apple Store, Uber/Lyft and Google Now to show where “the bar” is now set for user experience and the lessons there are for those of us looking to redesign healthcare.
The talk shares how the author thinks a Doctor’s visit ought to work:
• Phone detected on entry to office, hospital, or ER
• Insurance automatically checked
• Medical history automatically loaded into system
• Vitals and other quantified self info automatically loaded
• Data automatically used to sort queue and give wait times
• If ER, possible discharge to available nearby outpatient clinic or doctor’s office
• Portable medical record updated as patient exits
• (Aside: We also need payment reform!!!)
• Lets me rate my experience, and uses that rating to manage the quality of service
It continues to amaze me that so many really smart tech savvy people are still stuck on the idea that Doctor’s visits have to continue to start and take place within the four walls of a Doctors office.
It should be clear that with 70% of healthcare spending going to serving chronic illness the 2,000 year old healthcare model has expired, 93 year olds with iPads can’t understand why they can’t FaceTime their Doctors and the exciting opportunities for reinvention to serve Patients only really start to become possible when you stop holding tight to the idea that offices visits are the product of the healthcare industry.
If we’re going to compare things with consumer tech brands let’s be very clear: Apple doesn’t require you to visit the Apple Store to buy an iPhone, iPad or an App. 1.6 billion citizens have an Android smartphone but most have never seen a Google Office. Uber/Lyft have yet to build any taxi ranks…
****** UPDATE 23:35 17 March 2015 ******
