I recently spoke at MEDSEEK's annual eHealth Client Congress and revealed that prior to working for MEDSEEK that I spent about five years as a drug dealer. Yes, I was employed in the pharmaceutical industry and worked with physicians on a daily basis in New York City. It was there that I first started to realize the issues that providers had with access to information - the need to collaborate and the importance of providing physicians efficiency.
Learn more about MEDSEEK's Virtual Clinical Experience for Physicians
In a recent meeting, Dan Ansel, CEO of Private Health News mentioned to me that during the early 2000's he had been working around physician education. He said that the pharmaceutical companies were offering primary care providers a desktop computer free of cost - with the understanding the physician would spend one hour of the week speaking with a company representative. Fast forward the tape 18 months and the desktop was removed from each office. Why? The workflow and actions that the pharma companies were betting on didn't piggyback on an existing behavior for the physician. EMR's were just being discussed and it "didn't make sense" for physicians to go to a computer during the day.
As I type I'm traveling to California to see six clients in three days. During this time I will be studying the physicians to see what they do prior to, during, and after each meeting. One thing is for certain, they will all be checking their smartphones (Blackberry, iPhone, Droid) and/or iPads. We need to recognize this in eHealth circles; we need to answer the call that physicians are making to hospitals and healthcare organizations. They want real-time data, alerts and notifications to their hand-held devices, and a reduction in paper in the inbox to more productive and meaningful news and updates.
If we can start to piggyback on existing behavior - we have a much better opportunity in being successful and having long term loyalty for the providers that we serve.
Bradley Hawkins, Vice President Clinical Experience, MEDSEEK