Inefficiency
Progress and the gaps
Went with my wife to a medical specialist appointment a little while back (she’s fine, all routine).
It was at a Health Hub (healthcare in Australia is wonderful), very modern and new. You know the kind, where you get confused using touch panels to call the elevator.
Went up to the floor, walked the beautiful corridors, and entered the specialist’s rooms. Expensive, modern finishings, amazing view, the hand sanitiser was premium and scented.
The receptionist was professional and polite, and notified us we’d begin the new patient process shortly.
An impressive experience so far.
And then… she handed my wife a clipboard and pen, with a photocopied two sided form to fill out by hand.
Which my wife filled out over the next few minutes. Handed it back, and we watched as the receptionist pecked away at her keyboard for another few minutes entering the information into their system.
It struck me as so odd. A modern facility, impressive in many ways, and yet still stuck with outdated, inefficient (and probably error-prone) processes for the most basic of functions.
Most of us are worried about how AI is going to impact our businesses, our careers, our livelihoods. And yet here we are with premium medical facilities not even knowing how to digitally transform the simplest point.
