Domain expertise in healthcare can go a long way

mobilehealthnews: “[John] Sculley said [while speaking at the Digital Health Summit, CES 2012] that some companies have put too much emphasis on style over substance.

“The thing that is missing is getting the people with the domain expertise aligned with the people with technological know-how to turn ideas into branded services,””

I think these comments ring true for many of us that realize the disconnect between the people designing and building products for healthcare, and those actually using them. I can attest to the fact that it exists in many aspects of pharmacy automation and technology where things have a way of being forced down your throat. It becomes a game of which product is the “least bad”. It’s called settling for something, and it never really makes anyone happy. That’s why we’ve seen so many homegrown systems in pharmacies over the years.

There once was time when terrible usability at least meant great functionality. Unfortunately many companies have chosen to improve the usability at the expense of the functionality, which ultimately leads to a crappy product. I’ve experienced this many times during my career, especially with pharmacy information systems where improved UI’s have often resulted in poor performance, more mouse clicks and frustration.

Do the industry a favor and ask the end users what they need, instead of giving them what you think they want.