Dive Brief:
- A lack of communication between health IT developers and the patients and clinicians who rely on their creations is proving a "fundamental barrier" to real innovation, according to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine.
- Because there is insufficient interaction, developers tend to have an inadequate understanding of how end-users need and want to implement apps, wearables, and other tools, argued authors Robert S. Rudin, David W. Bates, and Calum MacRae.
- The disconnect is not just on developers' part as physicians also sometimes fail to adequately communicate about what improvements they need, the authors noted.
Dive Insight:
"Even as information technology transforms many industries, the pace of innovation in health IT continues to lag," the authors stated.
Inadequate collaboration has tended to result in problems such as one-size-fits-all solutions that actually do little to fit anyone's needs, or solutions that are customizable but only after much trouble on the part of the user, the article argued.
The authors put forth solutions that include collaborative teams comprised of developers, IT firms, patients and clinicians, as well as interviews with and observations of end-users. One suggestion appeared to go in the other direction, in proposing to update care processes to better align with new technologies.