Health IT, Telemedicine

How the current healthcare mindset is preventing wider digital health adoption

"In medicine, things go at a very different pace than in technology and science," Dr. Homero Rivas, an assistant professor of surgery and the director of innovative surgery at Stanford University, said during a webinar hosted by VSee. While most entrepreneurs like taking risks, physicians are typically risk-averse.

data, conceptual, information

Although digital health and telemedicine are gaining speed, the industry as a whole has been slow to implement technologies.

A survey from Sage Growth Partners found 44 percent of healthcare executives have not yet adopted telemedicine at their organization, and a report sponsored by Avizia said 82 percent of consumers don’t use telehealth.

A March 21 webinar hosted by VSee took a closer look at the barriers to wider adoption.

“In medicine, things go at a very different pace than in technology and science,” Dr. Homero Rivas, an assistant professor of surgery and the director of innovative surgery at Stanford University, said during the webinar. “The business model that we have had [in healthcare] hasn’t really changed. Medicine itself is not scalable.”

Why does healthcare take so long to innovate? Rivas said part of it has to do with the mindset of the industry and of physicians.

Most entrepreneurs are willing to take plenty of risks. Doctors, on the other hand, are risk-averse. They’re taught not to fail, as it may bring harm to a patient.

“If you always follow dogmas saying ‘You have to do it this way,’ then the innovation will go at a very slow pace,” Rivas said.

Medical school curriculum contributes to the lack of fast adoption, too. “Very, very few medical schools or nursing schools will actually include things such as mobile health or digital health or telemedicine,” he noted.

Instead, patients are often the best advocates for technologies in healthcare.

“I would say the biggest hurdle with no question is really not technological,” Rivas said.

There are other barriers to digital health utilization as well. For instance, providers may be reluctant to deploy telemedicine because they aren’t reimbursed as well as they should be, Rivas noted.

Other doctors worry about the issue of liability in telehealth. That is to say, physicians are concerned that a video conference appointment can be recorded and their words can be used against them.

“On the other hand, if you explicitly and in a professional way explain everything you have to to a patient and they have it well documented, I think you have a much better chance of being protected,” Rivas said.

Despite these challenges, he believes digital technologies can have a large impact, whether by assisting with overcrowding in emergency departments or simply by making the healthcare system more convenient for patients.

“I would say within 10 years or so, the way we practice medicine is going to be so different,” Rivas said. “This telemedicine thing is going to be very common.”

Photo: MATJAZ SLANIC, Getty Images

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