Cover story: Too much digital in healthcare?

With the generative AI boom hitting all industries, the healthcare system has been working through various digital transformations, including fast-tracking decisions and automating once manual processes, leaving the question of whether there is such a thing as too much digital in the healthcare space.

Ryan Klose, chief information officer at the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), told Digital Nation it's own technology implementations involve boosting patient care, education, and its administration processes.

“We're ultimately in a very human-facing industry. The importance of the clinician is just not a clerical and just not a medical exercise- it's health and wellbeing and a very human-empathetic exercise as well.

“Where we're using digital is really to improve the administration. Where we're using digital sometimes is when we have one clinician with too many patients. How do we elevate digital, whether it's using AI or whatever to provide that assisted extra pair of digital hands,” Klose said.

However, digital innovation can't replace the human approach to healthcare, according to Klose.

“As part of the young patient healing process, I would attest that any form of digital, any form of AI in healthcare will not take away from that relationship or that human connection that a clinician and a patient and their family will have.”

Digital has highlighted the importance of securing patient data, said Klose however, “the only negative” with digital entering the healthcare sector is understanding “the importance of security around our data and our systems”.

“That's what didn't work well initially for us in that area and it's been a learning. It's not something we're very comfortable with relinquishing too much security around our areas, but sometimes for the continuity of care that's what we need to do.”

He added emerging technology in the healthcare space includes boosting education and diagnosing in the field imagery and using technology to help identify the type of stroke a patient is experiencing via helmets to process the brain patterns.

“Anything where the clinicians get more intelligence in the field up front is where healthcare. for us, will shift.

Ultimately, Klose says there's a responsibility on patient data with the role of a CIO to lead the charge in taking advantage of any emerging tech and data.

Following with similar sentiments to Klose, Tanya Forster, psychologist and director of Macquarie Health Collective said there is a risk of becoming too reliant on digital.

However, she added the evolution of digital platforms in regional Australia has proved very powerful.

“Prior to the pandemic, I had patients who would drive four hours to access a consultation with me.

“Now, I might've felt that I had value that I could add to these consumers, but at the same time, even I can acknowledge that driving four hours each way for a consultation is a bit ridiculous.

“Telehealth has really changed the game for regional Australia,” Forster said.

“We have to remember that many of these people do not have access to primary care close to where they reside and particularly for farming communities, the impact of that is really considerable.

“When we think about times like drought, these are farmers that cannot leave the land to be able to go and access the healthcare that they require.

“Having some of these digital platforms and telehealth methods available has been really, really powerful for them I firmly believe that there's a very human component to the service delivery that we do as a psychologist,” she added.

Forster explained that continued face-to-face solutions alongside telehealth and digital platforms complement one another as these platforms are here to stay.  

“It's 2024. We do have to accept and embrace that digital solutions will be a part of our future.

“We have great potential to be able to think creatively but carefully about how we can use technology to strengthen our healthcare delivery.

“A lot of what we do, is a little bit clunky. A lot of what we do is quite manual and slow. If we can think about how we can rely on technology to strengthen some of our processes, then that could improve our systems and our healthcare delivery.

“I also believe that there is a human component to what we do and that that cannot be overlooked.”

Forster also explained one potential risk with technology is how medications are prescribed.

“When we access multiple different doctors when we access online platforms that are readily able to provide those scripts quickly and easily without having the same access to your health care or your other prescribing records, then I think we start to get into white murky waters,

“Unfortunately, we could have problems related to how those medications are dispensed,” Forster said.

Mike Jones, managing vice president for healthcare at Gartner said to ensure healthcare technology is embedded well, clinicians must be part of the journey.

“Technologies that we see today in the industry that are helping clinicians rather than hindering them,” Jones said.

“What we would call the systems of innovation, in technology … like clinical decision support tools, that will act on information that's in those core systems and give the clinician a view of the patient with some advice or guidance on perhaps what they might need to do next.”

Jones said clinical decision support is “actively helping clinicians” reach decisions and “not necessarily taking away their autonomy or authority”.

According to Jones, these technologies are “already there” with generative AI over the past 12 months able to “now synthesize a lot of knowledge out there and bring that to the fore”.

Bringing clinicians on the technology journey in the right way is key, said Jones.

“The clinicians that I've spoken to over the years are often initially, quite sceptical about the technology.”

He said first steps clinicians “need to understand what that technology is, what it is capable of doing and what is the value proposition”.  

“If there is an algorithmic-based clinical decision support tool for say triaging patients or a diagnostic tool, they really need to understand what it's there to do and what it's not there to do.

“Once people have been educated and understand the possibility of it, they then have to then become familiar with it.

“They have to understand how to use it well and get to a point where they can see the value of it in how they work.

“Once you've got those two things, … then you're in the right environment where you can introduce it and start to have them use it.”

Today, cost is one of the big challenges the healthcare systems face with inflation rising post-pandemic and health systems attempting to get back to normality.

“Health systems now are trying to catch up, not just with the technology, but also with just their clinical activity and the demand on the system.

“At the same time, you've got clinicians that have come out of the pandemic feeling quite burnt out by it.

“We really are in a time where healthcare needs technology to help us get back to where we need to be …. done in that right way.

“We've got a lot of opportunities ahead of us in the next two or three years with particularly with AI.

“But again, we've got to make sure that we do that in a meaningful and purposeful way. Working with clinicians, hand in hand with the clinical teams rather than just implement projects that we think are going to make a difference,” Jones said.