Skip to content
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Book
  • Careers
  • Podcast
  • Recommended
  • Speaking
  • All
  • Physician
  • Practice
  • Policy
  • Finance
  • Conditions
  • .edu
  • Patient
  • Meds
  • Tech
  • Social
  • Video
    • All
    • Physician
    • Practice
    • Policy
    • Finance
    • Conditions
    • .edu
    • Patient
    • Meds
    • Tech
    • Social
    • Video
    • About
    • Contact
    • Contribute
    • Book
    • Careers
    • Podcast
    • Recommended
    • Speaking

Why doctors are getting their asses kicked by technology

Drea Burbank, MD
Physician
June 29, 2022
Share
Tweet
Share

Physicians have terrible technology, but they refuse to recognize high-tech as a medical specialty. They must integrate technology as they do laboratory science.

Physicians are certainly suffering from poorly-designed electronic medical records (EHR), but they are also guilty of wilful blindness in abdicating responsibility for technology in medicine. This must change.

Physicians have a higher suicide rate than post-combat troops in the military. A lot of this is due to widespread burnout from poorly designed EHRs. Yes, it sucks, but who is really at fault?

What if this problem was a consequence of a professional stance medicine can choose to reverse? What if it won’t go away until we do?

How physicians are getting their asses kicked

Since the advent of EHR, doctors work an additional extra 10 to 25 hours a week, usually in meaningless data-entry tasks.

The constant stimulation of stressful popups with little-to-no clinical significance and lack of relevant data prioritization has led clinicians passionate about bedside medicine and concerned about medical errors to become highly critical of EHR.

Many physicians feel moral injury from their increasing inability to influence the quality of the cognitive environment they are forced to work in.

Simultaneously, physicians’ core clinical roles are being overrun. AI at Stanford predicts patient death and dispatches palliative care docs to the bedside. The U.S. military is developing robots to perform remote surgery on soldiers on the battlefield. Small startups vie to build hand-held diagnostic mini-laboratories which can be sold directly to consumers.

These technologies are not being designed by doctors; they are being designed by computer scientists, electrical engineers and college kids at hackathons. Why? Because doctors have decided that technology is something they use, not something they make.

Hospital software is commissioned improperly.

First, no reputable software designer would excuse the interfaces and circuitous pathways of modern EHRs. EHRs are not only bad medicine, but they are also lousy technology.

A quick glance at any hospital interface on the clinical market makes human-computer-interface (HCI) specialists wince in pain. Watching even the most adept user navigate an ordering system makes interaction designers cry. It’s undeniably, unbearably, unethically terrible software. And the rest of the technology clinicians get is pretty shit too.

ADVERTISEMENT

But the problem with medical technology lies in its design, development, procurement and implementation. Because clinicians have no little-to-no involvement in that pipeline, the people who do — hospitals, insurance companies, and payors — have no incentive to make clinical care more efficient. In fact, it’s quite the reverse.

Unlike children’s computer games, there is simply no free market for medical software. Currently, the EHR end-user is not utilized until they use the software to order life-saving treatments for patients. And by then, it’s much less useful and more time-consuming than a paper prescription pad.

Simply put, your 8-year-old child has more autonomy and input in the usability of Plants vs. Zombies than your surgeon does on his laparoscopic equipment.

What doctors don’t understand about technology

Doctors are also narcissistic about their specialty as a market. The truth is, despite all the money floating around in health care — EHR was a $29 billion industry in 2020 — most early-stage software developers avoid med-tech.

Doctors and health care systems are perceived as combative buyers without disposable cash, who avoid collaborative development and cannot implement technology rapidly enough for in situ development. Even worse, the user isn’t the buyer, and buyers and users have competing interests, so startups face a double bind — you literally can’t build software that will make your user happy. If you do, you can’t sell it.

Most doctors hate technologists because they believe technology development should be useful out of the box and should be able to design software by giving orders for its design — instead of becoming lab rats in its development, or heaven-forbid, learn how to build it themselves.

The truth is technology is just like laboratory science. It’s a different discipline, with different rules and parameters for success. And doctors know f*ck-all about it.

Physicians can do much, much better.

Drea Burbank is a physician-entrepreneur.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

Prev

Medical school loan repayment tips [PODCAST]

June 28, 2022 Kevin 0
…
Next

Is being a victim a part of being a doctor?

June 29, 2022 Kevin 0
…

Tagged as: Health IT

Post navigation

< Previous Post
Medical school loan repayment tips [PODCAST]
Next Post >
Is being a victim a part of being a doctor?

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

More by Drea Burbank, MD

  • How doctors can regain control of their software

    Drea Burbank, MD
  • How doctors should organize

    Drea Burbank, MD
  • How physicians are mishandling technology

    Drea Burbank, MD

Related Posts

  • Why do doctors who hate being doctors still practice?

    Kristin Puhl, MD
  • Doctors: It’s time to unionize

    Thomas D. Guastavino, MD
  • Doctors die. But the good ones leave a legacy.

    Jaime B. Gerber, MD
  • When doctors are right

    Sophia Zilber
  • We’re doctors. We signed the book.

    Jonathan Peters, MD
  • Why doctors-in-training need better nutritional education

    Abeer Arain, MD, MPH

More in Physician

  • The hidden cost of malpractice: Why doctors are losing control

    Howard Smith, MD
  • How scales of justice saved a doctor-patient relationship

    Neil Baum, MD
  • Rediscovering the soul of medicine in the quiet of a Sunday morning

    Syed Ahmad Moosa, MD
  • The broken health care system doesn’t have to break you

    Jessie Mahoney, MD
  • How a $75 million jet brought down America’s boldest doctor

    Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA
  • The dreaded question: Do you have boys or girls?

    Pamela Adelstein, MD
  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • How scales of justice saved a doctor-patient relationship

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
    • Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check

      Joshua Baker and James Jackson, PsyD | Conditions
    • The dreaded question: Do you have boys or girls?

      Pamela Adelstein, MD | Physician
    • The broken health care system doesn’t have to break you

      Jessie Mahoney, MD | Physician
    • The hidden cost of delaying back surgery

      Gbolahan Okubadejo, MD | Conditions
  • Past 6 Months

    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • Internal Medicine 2025: inspiration at the annual meeting

      American College of Physicians | Physician
    • What happened to real care in health care?

      Christopher H. Foster, PhD, MPA | Policy
    • Residency as rehearsal: the new pediatric hospitalist fellowship requirement scam

      Anonymous | Physician
    • Are quotas a solution to physician shortages?

      Jacob Murphy | Education
    • A faster path to becoming a doctor is possible—here’s how

      Ankit Jain | Education
  • Recent Posts

    • Addressing America’s reliance on psychotropic medication [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • The hidden cost of malpractice: Why doctors are losing control

      Howard Smith, MD | Physician
    • How scales of justice saved a doctor-patient relationship

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
    • Rediscovering the soul of medicine in the quiet of a Sunday morning

      Syed Ahmad Moosa, MD | Physician
    • An introduction to occupational and environmental medicine [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Does silence as a faculty retention strategy in academic medicine and health sciences work?

      Sylk Sotto, EdD, MPS, MBA | Conditions

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.


Find jobs at
Careers by KevinMD.com

Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now.

Learn more

View 3 Comments >

Founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho, MD, KevinMD.com is the web’s leading platform where physicians, advanced practitioners, nurses, medical students, and patients share their insight and tell their stories.

Social

  • Like on Facebook
  • Follow on Twitter
  • Connect on Linkedin
  • Subscribe on Youtube
  • Instagram

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • How scales of justice saved a doctor-patient relationship

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
    • Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check

      Joshua Baker and James Jackson, PsyD | Conditions
    • The dreaded question: Do you have boys or girls?

      Pamela Adelstein, MD | Physician
    • The broken health care system doesn’t have to break you

      Jessie Mahoney, MD | Physician
    • The hidden cost of delaying back surgery

      Gbolahan Okubadejo, MD | Conditions
  • Past 6 Months

    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • Internal Medicine 2025: inspiration at the annual meeting

      American College of Physicians | Physician
    • What happened to real care in health care?

      Christopher H. Foster, PhD, MPA | Policy
    • Residency as rehearsal: the new pediatric hospitalist fellowship requirement scam

      Anonymous | Physician
    • Are quotas a solution to physician shortages?

      Jacob Murphy | Education
    • A faster path to becoming a doctor is possible—here’s how

      Ankit Jain | Education
  • Recent Posts

    • Addressing America’s reliance on psychotropic medication [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • The hidden cost of malpractice: Why doctors are losing control

      Howard Smith, MD | Physician
    • How scales of justice saved a doctor-patient relationship

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
    • Rediscovering the soul of medicine in the quiet of a Sunday morning

      Syed Ahmad Moosa, MD | Physician
    • An introduction to occupational and environmental medicine [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Does silence as a faculty retention strategy in academic medicine and health sciences work?

      Sylk Sotto, EdD, MPS, MBA | Conditions

MedPage Today Professional

An Everyday Health Property Medpage Today
  • Terms of Use | Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • DMCA Policy
All Content © KevinMD, LLC
Site by Outthink Group

Why doctors are getting their asses kicked by technology
3 comments

Comments are moderated before they are published. Please read the comment policy.

Loading Comments...