The Enterprise Mobility Roundup
The Enterprise Mobility Roundup
Is 40 Seconds Costing Lives? The Hidden UX Crisis in Healthcare
Every day, nurses spend precious seconds waiting to access the necessary tools to provide care. In high-stakes environments, those 40 seconds to log in can be the difference between a saved life and a missed intervention.
In today's episode, we reframe "UX" from a design buzzword into a clinical imperative. It’s not enough for tools to be secure; they must also be fast, intuitive, and designed with the end user’s environment in mind. By elevating clinicians as stakeholders in technology decisions, we not only reduce burnout and improve satisfaction but also create safer, more responsive care environments.
It’s time we ask: what if tech didn’t just protect data, but saved time, and by extension, lives?
Welcome to the Enterprise Mobility Roundup Podcast brought to you by Bluefletch. We discuss technology topics related to Android and workforce devices and how they intersect with business and mobility.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Bluefletch Enterprise Mobility Roundup Podcast. I'm Brett Cooper, joined with Richard Makerson, and today we're going to be going through a presentation that Rich will be doing at a healthcare conference later this year. I want to just cover some of the key points and topics and talk through them. If you do have questions on these, we will be fielding those at a couple of the conferences I think we'll be at Health, we'll also be at HIMSS and we'll be at Vibe as well, so definitely reach out to us if you want to meet up face-to-face. So, richard, the title of your presentation I know we went through a couple of different iterations when you came up with it, but is 40 seconds long enough to save a life was, I think, what we ended up with, which was good, and I think the subcontext is the healthcare's blind spot the cost of clunky UX, the word clunky what made that come to mind for you as we were throwing these around?
Speaker 3:Well, I wanted to come up with a title that was a little bit provocative but also could be used as an AI prompt provocative, but also could be used as an AI prompt.
Speaker 3:But then you know, we've been really focused on user experience, whether it's been our consulting days at Accenture early on at Bluefletch, we you and I have been the ones responsible for delivering technology to the end user, and you and I don't want to show up and someone says this is a hot pile of garbage, right.
Speaker 3:So we've done our best to make sure that we've thought about that in user experience, thought about that handover, to make sure it's, you know, as best as possible. And so you know that's just kind of one of our core values and ethos here at Bluefudge. And so, when you think about the clunky UX experience, you waste time, you introduce more clicks and then it ultimately leads to frustration. And so I believe it was at one of the Zebra events where they talked about, during a normal course of a day, that a clinical user, whether it be a nurse or doctor, could have a thousand interactions or taps on a device. And if those thousand taps, if a good percentage of them are frustrated taps, how much of that is just poking at the device or wanting to slam it because it's not doing what you need to do in an efficient and elegant manner, and so reducing that, reducing that frustration, is part of the value that we bring, and so just trying to highlight that and bring that into the you know, the health care context.
Speaker 2:I've actually never, never seen the analytics around how many touches you have on your screen during a day. I'm just imagining I've seen the kids when I pick the kids up from school, like all the kids sliding and swiping on their phones how many taps that an average person does in a day. But I think it's a very provocative image just thinking somebody's going to touch their computer a thousand times or their handheld handheld device and should they be interacting with a patient or interacting with the other clinicians and the staff.
Speaker 2:So it's definitely an interesting concept and I guess the, the, the next piece of that, the 40 seconds. Can you dive into why seconds matter, why those 40 seconds matter? What was the, I guess for us? Why is that important?
Speaker 3:yeah. So analytics we've gathered and just test. We ran at nrf last year in the direct source booth. We saw that on average it takes an end user 40 seconds to enter in an email and a password. And in health care, for these clinical mobility devices, you know, when you're in a hospital and your whole job is about patient outcomes and saving lives, those seconds really do matter. And so if I'm not having to deal with clunky UX for UI, if I can have an elegant experience, then it means that I have more time to focus on patient care, focus on my job or maybe other areas or tasks that I have that aren't as efficient. And so for us, you know, anytime you interact with a piece of BlueFledge software, we want it to be a great experience so that hopefully, even in those other tasks that are not efficient, you at least feel better going into it or you feel good knowing that you're using some software where folks have thought about your flow, your workflow, and know how important your job is.
Speaker 2:Make the app feel good. I heard you say this morning on the UX meeting just make it feel good. I think the you know one of the things just thinking about that and it's 40 seconds, but how many times? I know we have a lot of companies. I think we have one company that has over 80 apps across their employees. That's not a healthcare org, but there are a lot of healthcare applications Whether you're a nurse or a PA or somebody in a clinical environment that has to use. What have you seen for the customers you've worked with and the folks you've helped out? How many apps do we see typically in a nurse's Zebra device or Honeywell device in a nurse's?
Speaker 3:Zebra device or Honeywell device. Yeah, in the healthcare setting it may not be as big as some of our other customers Like that one customer is an outlier but they really have leaned into how much value and efficiency they can gain by diving really deep into our product feature set. But usually it's somewhere between four and 10 apps and so if I'm able to navigate those easily, if I'm able to serve up information on widgets without having to dive into the app, I can get information at a glance or make the patient interaction, whether it's on the bedside or the patient is under observation, and I can see notifications, I can see progress. It's just those, you know, small bites at the of the apple that add up over time, whether it's a course of a shift over a week, over months, of dealing with so many patients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting, I know. I talked to a doctor recently about this and her feedback specifically was about the amount of paperwork during a shift they have to do and how that there's definitely a trade off, whether it's on a computer or mobile device, versus actually working with patients and doing the job, versus doing all the overhead associated with the job. I know you personally. You you come from I guess I had the question you, you come from a health care family. I know, um, your mom, your siblings are in health care. Um, how are you black sheep? Where you ended up in it? What happened there?
Speaker 3:another doctor did a good job of talking me out of going to health care, so I thought I would have been some type of doctor graduating high school, going into college. But, um, I like to tinker, like to take things apart, understand how they work, make them better. I really love being able to go on the internet and just research how to solve problems and figuring it out myself. And you know, with everyone around me and my immediate family being in healthcare, there was no one in technology that provided a mirror or a reflection to show that like I could go into this as a career. It just seemed like a hobby, because the few folks that I knew that were in technology had other jobs. But they did that as a hobby and you know that's why I went into technology. And now that we're starting to work with health systems and health systems globally, it feels like a big full circle moment that, you know, eventually ended back up into health care, but in a different way.
Speaker 2:So Thanksgiving, everybody is complaining about their technology to you and you're like I'm just going to go solve this. I like it. I think the other thing that you talked about was a lot of these solutions and we've seen this not just healthcare across different industries is around technology for technology sake, or it like I always give the funny example. There's a incredible developer on our team and I'll reference if I see something that looks like it was uh, um, you know, a sequel type query, like where it's just very poorly designed. I'm like I think this guy did it, um, but there, you know, there is this trade-off of the user user or UX, versus things that are designed for people or human-centric. Tell me more like what's your philosophy around? Like the moving fast from a tech perspective versus like thinking about the end user and doing the difficult solution?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it. It's incumbent on the IT provider or that company to be able to take a step back and understand. How do you strike that balance of compliance and kind of having a you know cover yourself strategy for lack of a better term versus being able to lean in and understand you know how do you deliver like a great experience for that end user. And so I think, as some of these companies either get bigger or grow through acquisition, you lose your ability to be able to lean in. When you strike that balance, you start to rely on, you know check boxes, making sure that we're compliant and that you know you can tap a badge and these apps are available and that's it.
Speaker 3:What about the edge cases? What about spending time with end users? And I think, just with our consulting background and years of building custom applications, we look at it as software and we really try to strike that balance. But that balance with knowing that we've done anything and everything to deliver you know a high quality experience, that when people come to work they like the tools that they use. So if I got to do a ton of paperwork as a nurse, at least my rounds were easier because of the software that you know Blue Fletch ultimately delivered.
Speaker 2:I know one of the things and I feel like we saw a shift in a lot of other industries. I know retail, particularly, and also some of the consumer apps. I always think of Home Depot and Chick-fil-A. They spent a lot of money in the teens where they went and built UX teams or hired UX experts and it's very noticeable in their apps because they work well. You can find what you're looking for. It's really thought out. What do you think is the lag where we haven't seen that take as much in healthcare? It's not a leader. I look at healthcare In the US it's it's. It's not a um, it's not a leader. You know, I look at health care it's over in the us. It's over 20 of gdp, which is a very big number. Um, it would seem that it would be the leader in driving some of this ux and just experience adoption. What do you think the key reasons for it being a laggard are?
Speaker 3:yeah. So let's unpack the chick-fil-a and home depot example that you covered For us. I've always said, in retail, specifically brick and mortar retail Amazon, over the last 15 years, has forced retailers to innovate or die. A lot of your well-known brands that are not around anymore for whatever reason weren't comfortable innovating, didn't have the budget, didn't have the budget, didn't have the teams and ultimately aren't here, and so you needed to lean in, you needed to invest and trust that. Okay, if I'm going to compete with Amazon, I have this brick and mortar store, I have these employees. I need to create value and show that value.
Speaker 3:Chick-fil-a, on the other hand, just really cared about the experience. Right, it's Southern hospitality, and so how do you lean into that? Not only hiring great people or having a really great culture that's known worldwide, but allowing technology to drive that as well. You know that's why you can see the line wrapped around, uh, drive through wrapped around, uh, chick-fil-a. But you're very comfortable getting in line because you know that they have video analytics. They're processing this and figuring out how they can deliver a quality meal, but very quickly and consistently to you.
Speaker 3:And so, for you know, healthcare, you know it's different. It's not about selling tools. So for you know healthcare, you know it's different. It's not about selling tools or lumber, or you know fried chicken sandwiches and Polynesian sauce. You're in there because of patient outcomes. You know lives are on the line and so you really do need to take your time and understand. You know where is that balance from an innovation standpoint and a user experience standpoint? I mean, I may be speaking out of turn here. I'm not a doctor, not a nurse. I didn't go to med school.
Speaker 2:Nor is he a lawyer.
Speaker 3:So nor am I a lawyer, but it was. You know it's a badge of honor to work, you know, double shifts for 24 hours or be in a six hour surgery. Part of the job was grinding through this delivery in order to save a life or make sure someone can have a good quality of life or deliver a baby, and so I just think, because those the outcomes and delivery and the job is at a much higher stake. It is a laggard, but you know from us not very little, but for us it's software, and so you know if the challenge is compliance, then you know we're very comfortable taking that step back and understanding how can we work to something that is great, that will move the needle in saving lives. You know delivering better patient outcomes. So I'll stop there before I continue to rant and keep trying to draw parallels.
Speaker 2:Now I just want a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. It's so good. I think I was going to ask you just case study and just experience. I know there was, um, we've done some pocs and there's particularly one specifically around, I believe, improving the workflow for nurses with the paging tools and, um, just some of those pieces can you talk about, like the? You know what that hospital system wanted to do and then what were the outcomes that happened once they started to think about the workflows for the patients.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so typically when customers come to us and this is not any different to healthcare it's because the that initial workflow of signing into the device is is not dialed in as what they want. Right, there's edge cases. It's not just being able to go up to a docking station, tap a badge, I get a device and then that's the only time I'd log in. You know what happens if I set the device down, what happens if another employee picks up a device. It's being able to solve for those edge cases and have an elegant solution. So being able to sign in this healthcare system had, you know, hundreds of hospitals and so you're talking tens of thousands of devices. So how do you standardize on a platform that could work across all those devices in two different or at least in multiple countries? I think it's more than two, and you know, sometimes tie together applications that don't traditionally support SSO, which you want an SSO-like experience.
Speaker 3:You know that's some of the value that we add. But once they started digging into the features and looking for the products a little bit more, they realized they can extract more value. So know, now we can create accountability and understand who's doing what, when and where. Increased device utilization, you know, the bigger you get, the more devices that you have. Statistically you will lose them, but if you have the technology along with the processes to reduce or mitigate that, you'll be much better off than what you were before. And so you know that leads to, you know, quickly getting into the device, understanding what your tasks are for the day, getting to your tasks in a more efficient manner just leads to, you know, happier. Happier employees, better patient outcomes and happier patients.
Speaker 2:On that thread. I know the idea of human-centered design or human-centered UX is a thing people will throw out there, but give me, like the way you do it or the way we do it at Blue Flatch, the role-based. You pick up a device. It's customized towards you. What are some of the examples you've seen that that benefits, whether it's in healthcare or even some of these other large organizations you work with?
Speaker 3:It's just. It creates flexibility to really fine-tune that experience. And so if you have different levels of nurses that maybe need different access to applications, it could be as simple as you want the icon of an application to look different, or the label or the name to call it something else because it fits just the communication culture of your health care system a little bit better, of your healthcare system a little bit better. It may be initiating a workflow for a particular user. I know we worked with a hospital system here locally in Atlanta that had zero compliance for this paging system and so with us being able to log in automatically, kick that off, you know you could drive 100% compliance because the user doesn't have to worry about that. That's something that happens dynamically, automatically and unbeknownst to them.
Speaker 3:But I really think it's the core of it is just years of being clean sheet development company when big companies couldn't build it or buy it they would call Bluefledge, and so when Bluefledge builds a product, we build it in such a way that it's highly configurable, highly modular. You know you can deliver it out of the box and it can work. But when you start to run into these edge cases that typically you cannot solve with some of these other solutions and providers. That's where we really shine. And so that healthcare system that you mentioned.
Speaker 3:You know, once they saw that we could solve and be an alternative to the status quo from a sign-in and SSO perspective, they really started diving into the feature set and said, okay, we can really extract a lot of value here. And you know we can really extract a lot of value here. And you know they got really creative. And so I really get excited when customers get creative on our product. It does bring back some of that, you know, consulting excitement that we used to have around here and so it works for them and that's what makes us different it works for them and that's what makes us different.
Speaker 2:On just to dive into the I'm going to call it the user centric piece. I know one of the things that we have, a there's actually a poster in the Bluefudge office and it says we build software that employees want to use. But I think that's sort of the summary of it. It's been up, we've had it up for 15 plus years and I think the think that's sort of the summary of it. It's been up, we've had it up for 15 plus years and I think the it's one of the things that you and I have always stood by, thinking about the employee who has to use this. And I say it and people probably get tired of hearing me say it, but you know, when you have software that people, millions of people use every day, think about how to improve their lives and do it with that. But I think when you look at the healthcare ecosystem and think about, you know what, if all these companies thought about the nurse first, what do you think would change? What would we see? Difference in the healthcare or clinical ecosystem?
Speaker 3:I mean having a better experience just means you're going to feel better, right it's? You know you're starting to think about reducing stress, reducing clicks, reducing calories of thought, calories of movement. You know you're getting someone excited and it has a bit of a dopamine effect. It has a bit of a dopamine effect and so I think because not much I want to say, not much thought but you know, when you think about workflow optimization, when you think about user experience, healthcare is not the number one example.
Speaker 3:You usually hear, right, you usually hear someone in, you know a different type of environment in a different vertical, and so you know we've been doing that in these other verticals for, you know, a number of years, almost 20 years, you and I together.
Speaker 3:And so now to bring this into healthcare and bring it at a time where I think they're ready for it, especially when you think of what the challenges healthcare is up against, like in many other verticals, whether it's labor, when you think about, you know, this gender culture, the expectations they have when they come to the job. They expect, you know, technology to be at least as good as the technology that they have in their pocket or at home or in their cars, and when it's not, you know they're frustrated, they're frustrated, they're going to be stressed and frustrated and stressed. That's not going to lead to a positive outcome. And so you know, I think we're around at the right time to be able to, you know, address that and, you know, meet workers where they're at. And I don't think, you know, companies, especially in health care, historically had to highly consider that presentation is unpopular.
Speaker 2:Truths, specifically around diving into that topic a bit further, that healthcare is behind a lot of other things. So your point like what you have in your pocket is just so much more. What nurses have in the pocket is so much more advanced than what they have at work. What are some of the threads or things you identified around why healthcare is so far behind? Is it compliance? Is it the insurance companies? Is it the lawyers Like what's? What? Is the driver of them being behind from a technology aspect?
Speaker 3:I mean, I think it's a little bit of everything. You know some of the conversations we've had around getting things through a security architecture review board.
Speaker 2:Is this the one where I have to like print it out and then fax it back to them?
Speaker 3:No, this is where they just don't approve it, and so the most secure thing is something that you can't use, right? Nobody can hack nothing. But yeah, when you look at the HIPAA compliance and HIPAA laws, when is the last time that's been updated or at least iterated on in such a manner that it can feel like it's evolving with technology? And, like I said, like the stakes are high in healthcare and so I get it, it's.
Speaker 3:It's very easy to say not right now, that's too much, because you are dealing with, you know, the lives and health and the livelihood of people, but at the same time you can have those conversations, you know, you can have those proof of concepts, those pilots. It's just trying to figure out what's that pattern or what's that ecosystem, or that feedback loop. What is it gonna look like for the years to come? Because technology is evolving so rapidly especially you think about artificial intelligence and all the efficiencies that that's bringing. And how do you build guardrails around that? Right, you know that's moving, you know quick enough and you know introducing that into a vertical that has been historically slow to change for good reason. You know it's going to reach a tipping point to where something's going to happen.
Speaker 2:This is where I talk about my idea of a fax machine that has AI built in, oh God. So just to close out, if you and this kind of brings us to like the end or tactical part if you had to challenge healthcare organizations to think about what to go do next, like go do like this thing or these two things next, what would you recommend people start with? I know it's such a huge thing all these different topics Like what is the easy thing for people to start with and just go pick things off. Where would you start?
Speaker 3:Possibly figuring out how to document, get feedback in existing workflows. I do think, at least for some of the IT teams we've interacted with at these healthcare systems, you could tell that they have like negative bandwidth. So how do you create the environment where they can still work but also think about test, present options for what's next and not, you know, constantly be putting out fires? You know 24, not you know constantly be putting out fires. You know 24-7,. You know doing blocking and tackling activities when they really need some bandwidth to be able to figure out, you know, is Blue Flag the right solution or not? And if it is, you know how can we move forward with it.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, for some of the compliance and other pieces, it's probably, you know, above my pay grade and probably a whole different podcast when thinking about um. You know HIPAA compliance and, uh, you know how does that evolve in a world where, um, you know all of our information is already essentially out there. You know how do you keep this safe? How do you keep it from hallucinating, or what are the things that we can do now that you know, maybe reduce the paper workload of a nurse? You know, get them from behind or keep them from deaths, where they can spend time with patients and have the bandwidth to keep things top of mind and be ready for emergencies.
Speaker 2:Awesome, All right. So two key takeaways Focus on those nurses and then think about how to free up time for your IT teams to look at their processes and try to rationalize those and make those better. So, Richard, thank you for going through this today. Like I said at the top of the podcast, Richard will be presenting this topic at some of the healthcare conferences we're attending this year, specifically, I believe, Vibe Health and HIMSS, and we know we'll be at some other ones we're going to be visiting. So if you're interested in around those, definitely reach out to us. You'll see us post about it on social media, mainly LinkedIn, and if you have any other questions or thoughts for us, please reach out at info at bluefletchcom. And Richard, once again, thanks for joining and walking us through this. Yep, thank you.
Speaker 2:Excellent, Thanks everyone no-transcript.