Digital tools bring many benefits, but it’s the healthcare professionals who must adapt and manage them. Rather than easing their workload, some technologies contribute to fatigue. How can we achieve a balance where digital innovation truly supports both patients and healthcare workers? At the European Health Forum Gastein (24-27 September 2024, Austria), experts outlined strategies to drive sustainable digital health transformation.
Great new tools, but somebody has to use them
Digital health has two faces: Although digital technologies help personalize patient care, each click can come at the expense of direct doctor-patient communication.
“While data-driven approaches push the shift toward preventive care, clinicians are often left to sift through vast amounts of unstructured information stored across disparate sources,” according to Artur Olesch, digital health journalist and moderator of the debate.
Yet, there’s reason for optimism. The solution isn’t solely in refining current technologies or introducing tools like AI but also in rethinking patient pathways and prioritizing the well-being of healthcare workers. During the session “Enhancing care delivery through digital innovation. Patient safety and staff wellbeing as guiding principles” organized by the European Patient Safety Foundation (EUPSF) and Philips, experts discussed how to balance digitalization for the benefit of both patients and healthcare professionals.
The impact of digital innovations on healthcare professionals
It’s a paradox of digital transformation: digital tools intended to reduce administrative burdens often contribute to healthcare professionals’ increasing workload and stress. “The biggest burden for us now is non-clinical work, administrative tasks, and bureaucracy. Even though we’re excited about new technologies, we need to solve the administrative duties problems first,” according to Miglė Trumpickaitė, Vice President of the European Junior Doctors Association.
A survey conducted during the debate suggests that 26% of respondents felt that digital health applications added to healthcare professionals' fatigue. At the same time, the majority believed these tools either reduced or had no impact on fatigue, signaling the multifaceted relationship between technology and worker well-being.
Luckily, healthcare technology is quickly evolving to address these challenges, according to Mark Konrad, Head of Medical Affairs and Clinical Affairs for Hospital Patient Monitoring at Philips. Konrad highlighted efforts to simplify user interfaces and reduce cognitive overload instead of making just more technology: “When developing new digital innovations, we’re trying to do the opposite—remove, simplify, have less, and create something that’s easy to understand and handle.”
“We need to change how our clinical colleagues work. We have to reimagine care pathways so that technology can enhance workflows effectively,” Konrad highlighted.
Even if technology is perfect, many other factors affect its adoption
Marc Lazarovici, Head of the Human Simulation Center at Munich Medical School, spotlighted a disconnect between research and implementation in healthcare technology. “There is a gap between what we envision in research as helpful and what ends up being implemented,” he said, emphasizing the need for better collaboration among researchers, educators, and industry to bridge this divide.
Digital literacy and training for healthcare professionals are other critical challenges. “Most of the curriculums in Europe don’t focus enough on digital technology literacy,” Trumpickaitė noted. “They don’t teach professionals how to use AI or anything like that.” Without education, the adoption of new technologies is limited.
Mirka Cikkelova, General Secretary of the European Patient Safety Foundation, addressed the issue of healthcare professional fatigue. “We need to focus on the people—both patients and healthcare professionals—who use digital tools, ensuring they are in a state where they can think clearly and aren’t exhausted due to overload of unfriendly technologies,” according to Cikkelova.
Reimaging workflows to make digital innovation working
In an audience poll, “redesigning pathways and processes” was identified as the most critical first step to ensuring digital innovations effectively support healthcare workers.
Cikkelova claims that we need to shift the focus from relying on technology alone to addressing patient and healthcare professional safety: “When we identify priorities from both patient and healthcare worker safety perspectives, our decisions will be different.”
Konrad shared an example of how redesigning processes is already making an impact. Philips’ Silent Patient Room concept, aimed at reducing alarm fatigue in intensive care units, externalizes sound from the patient’s environment, leading to less anxiety for families and fewer distractions for staff. Another solution developed with a focus on user experience is Visual Patient Avatar, a graphical representation of a patient’s vital signs that allows healthcare professionals to see all the critical data at first sight. “In the past, we added complexity and more colors. Now, the avatar is our first step towards simplifying, doing less, and making it easier to understand,” Konrad noted.
The future of digital is user-centered design
The panelists concluded that successful digital innovation in healthcare requires collaboration across all stakeholders—policymakers, industry leaders, healthcare providers, and patients. “We need policymaking, legislation, industry, and caregivers to come together and solve the underlying problems instead of focusing on short-term solutions,” Konrad urged.
Lazarovic mentioned the potential of technologies like augmented reality and artificial intelligence in medical training and telemedicine, envisioning a future where telemedicine might provide an immersive experience akin to “a holodeck—a holographic environment simulator—from Star Trek.”
We need a holistic approach to digital innovation, prioritizing healthcare professionals' well-being and enhancing patient safety. As Cikkelova concluded, “If we invest in long-term sustainable patient safety improvements, we’ll save costs and be able to reinvest those savings.” collaboration, rethinking existing systems, and a commitment to sustainable, user-focused solutions.
