The US healthcare system is facing unprecedented pressure. An aging population and an increased need for specialisedspecialized care means more patients with high needs. The retirement of baby boomers and educational bottlenecks has created a nursing shortfall. It’s estimated that an additional 1.1 million nurses will be needed by 2022, with an expected shortfall of 690,000. Doctors are feeling the pressure as well. In the face of rising costs, they’re expected to spend less time with each patient to maintain profitability. This is turn, transfers the strain and workload to nurses who are already stretched beyond capacity.
How does technology help in this scenario? How does it enable healthcare professionals to become more human rather than less human? Humanizing technology is the term used to put people at the center of the digital age and to explain the evolution of technology to better understand, support and augment human experiences.
“The enduring winners will be those who can successfully navigate technology and preserve the human touch.”
Here are five ways this trend is playing out and some of the implications for Human Resources (HR) in the Healthcare sector:
1. Technology creates better human experiences
Technology makes it possible to access personal, relevant content and take action when and where we need to. Done well, it simplifies our lives. A desire to create better workplace experiences has spurred the development of a new breed of mobile-enabled HR tools available when and where we need them.
Recruitment, learning and performance management can be done on-the-go via mobile devices. Everyday performance and everyday learning apps provide continuous feedback and learning as people engage in their work. For an industry where medical breakthroughs, new medications and changes in procedures are an ongoing reality, the ability to access content and learn in real-time is the way of the future.
New learning models, career enhancement incentives, and recognition and evaluation systems are amongst recommendations to help alleviate the nursing shortfall. HR has a crucial role to play in guiding, evaluating and embedding talent acquisition processes. If you’re just embarking on this journey, start simple and focus on getting the basics right.
2. Technology enables big data to create better patient outcomes
The idea of big data, analytics and the value it can create isn’t new. Yet, only 12% of healthcare organisationsorganizations say they are excelling in using data to improve quality of decision making and reduce costs. The reason? Disparity of data sources and lack of technology to harness the insights. Although more healthcare data is being generated than ever before, the data is dispersed across multiple entities – health funds, health providers and patients. To further compound the challenge, healthcare data comes in various formats – billings, clinical and patient registration data. OrganisationsOrganizations that are investing in the technology infrastructure to retrieve, store and analyze data will reap the benefits for patients and staff. Easily accessible, relevant information at your fingertips not only saves time, it can save lives.
3. Humans augment smart technology – and vice versa
Artificial Intelligence is expected to revolutioniserevolutionize the pharmaceutical industry over the next ten years. The ability of AI to read large data sets and understand patterns – namely the complex, causal pathways for disease – is expected to reduce the time for drug discovery and improve clinical trial success rates saving billions of dollars and potentially lives. However, this will not be possible without the guidance of experienced scientists asking relevant questions and providing appropriate data.
AI makes more accurate medical diagnoses than humans, from melanoma to pneumonia, but receiving this diagnosis from a machine doesn’t sit well. Most of us would prefer to talk to a doctor, preferably one with a pleasant bedside manner, who can answer our questions and alleviate concerns. And there is nothing more frustrating than cycling through online help content and voice recognition systems that don’t understand our specific needs. (Just let me talk to somebody, please!) For the foreseeable future, a human interface will continue to be the norm in many situations and bring the intuition, empathy and creativity that we demand. Jobs will be designed for people to augment smart technology with a human touch, and this process of re-design can start in HR.
4. Technology lets us focus on the human touch
The industrial revolution changed not only how we work but how we view work. Fast forward 100 years to the digital revolution and exponential growth in automation, AI and machine learning – is it different this time? Will robots or AI take our jobs? The forecast for the US Healthcare sector is 37% of jobs. In reality less than 5% of roles are fully automatable, however, in many cases up to 30% of a role could be automated. This gives us the opportunity to focus our time on what we as individuals do best.
For healthcare specialists and nurses, reducing the administration burden means more time to focus on helping patients. Imagine a world where AI acts as your very own personal assistant. Technology has the power to remove the negative aspects from work such as bias and boredom, freeing up time and space for the uniquely human characteristics of creativity, intuition, conceptual thinking and compassion. HR can start asking critical questions now to help their company reshape for this future: What should the organisationalorganizational structure look like? How will core jobs evolve and change? How can we best equip the workforce for these future roles?
5. Technology fosters connections and communities
Humans are social creatures. Being part of a community is integral to how we’re wired. We need to connect, we need to belong, we need to feel we’re part of something bigger than just ourselves.
Technology has created a global village where we can just as easily ask a medical question of someone in Timbuktu as our colleague three doors down. Instant messaging means we can ‘talk’ to anyone, anywhere at any time. We no longer lose contact with friends and colleagues and we can join communities on just about any conceivable interest. To date, Facebook has more than two-billion active users and LinkedIn has half a billion professional users.
Many organisationsorganizations are adopting internal social platforms to facilitate communication, information sharing and learning opportunities. Savvy recruiters are connecting with talent on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Most office workers (78%) view technology in the workplace as a positive force enabling them to connect with their co-workers. HR has an opportunity to facilitate, coordinate and drive the uptake of technology connecting talent within and outside the organisationorganization.
Where to next?
Technology has had a profound impact on how we work and will continue to do so. HR has an opportunity to help shape the way this unfolds into the future. From allaying fears (we are not replacing you with a robot) through to reskilling employees (yes, we replaced part of your role with AI). HR has a crucial role in coaching and mentoring managers to use technology to create efficiencies. We can’t hide behind the technology, we need to maintain our authenticity and vulnerability. At the end of the day we find our greatest sense of achievement doing meaningful work, with managers that recogniserecognize and support us, and being part of an organisationorganization we believe in. These are all profoundly human qualities, technology just helps create the space to do it.
Fresh insights for HR
Stay up to date with HR trends, tips and more when you sign up for our industry newsletter
