The health care sector is well known for being very slow at making changes. That is understandable to a point. In contrast, when Facebook or Google releases software with lots of bugs, the worst they will get is a horde of rants online. They typically don’t have to worry about people dying because of their mistakes. A hospital or pharmaceutical company, on the other hand, can’t just make mistakes with the sole intention of discovering what works and what doesn’t. They have to do it in a way that they don’t put billions of lives at risk in the process. All the same, changes are happening in the medical industry, from the development of Invokana to the use of blockchain technology in the maintenance of medical records. With that in mind, it can be awe-inspiring to see how companies in one of the most difficult industries are tackling their challenges.
Have you ever found yourself walking out of a hospital with a disease that you didn’t have walking in? This is even after all the usual protective measures like the disinfecting of surfaces and the washing of hands, have been taken. The spread of infections in hospitals can be quite unpredictable at times. Companies are trying to solve the problem by using some proprietary algorithms as well as IBM’s Watson to help prevent the spread of disease and understand how it works a little better. That’s not to mean you shouldn’t still wash your hands, though.
As for customer service, things are still a little backward in clinics and hospitals as compared to other industries. You can go to virtually every other industry, and you feel like the customer service is excellent compared to the kind of service you would get in a medical institution. This poor customer service is a disservice, not just to the patients but to the medical practice as well. In fact, because of poor customer service, as many as half of all medical patients will miss the appointments that are scheduled for them. While this may lead them to miss out on critical medical care that would ultimately help them get better and healthier, the cost to medical institutions and the health sector, in general, is even more punishing. Because of these missed appointments, the health sector loses up to $150 billion a year. That is a significant amount of revenue that would have gone to improving the sector, making it more capable of providing higher quality care to the patients.
In light of that, don’t you think it would be great to get something like a text message or have an app that reminds you of your scheduled doctor’s appointment? It would tell you when the appointment is, where you have to go, both in terms of hospital and department, and also what you have to bring with you. Companies are coming up with new kinds of technologies that make it possible to communicate with patients before the appointment, as well as after, to make sure that the patients turn up, get the help they need and leave satisfied with the service.
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