Physicists and Engineers Need More Healthcare Professionals in Their Team—PART 1—The Skill Gap Issues

 

 

Throughout history, health issues have been a subject of fear and fascination in equal measure. Whether it's your parents, a family doctor, a scientist, or a curious engineer—brainstorming about staying healthy, combating a disease, or finding a preventive ‘nuska’ has been commonplace. Precisely why, healthcare has piqued the interest of people from all walks of life—and today, let’s slowly spotlight the cross-pollination between medicine and engineering. 

 

But first, is this cross-pollination a necessity or a mere fad?

 

Having read many cases about innovation flatlines and the fall of healthcare startups….of course, to feed my own 'skepticism’ before jumping into the ‘healthcare startup’ culture myself…..a statement by Mark Roberge of Harvard Business School that particularly scratched my mind was, “Whether a company is valued at $1 million, $10 million, or $100 million, the failure rate is the same.” 

 

Scary! 

The question is ‘why?’

 

Understanding  the Skill Gap in HealthTech

 

Of the many reasons, one that stands out is ‘lack of industry experience’: NOT understanding the needs of the end-users, NOT involving end-users in the ideation and manufacturing process, and NOT establishing feedback strategies at every stage of product development. 

 

The idea of HEALTHCARE is ‘to build something people need'—' that solves their challenges or problems in healthcare.’ 

 

What happens when the ‘industry experience’ is insufficient or not recieved from someone ‘within the industry’? 

 

In healthcare—which is a people-driven industry... for and by the people—dealing with life and death—the impact of ‘lacking industry experience’ can be gargantuan.

 

The crux of technology, devices, or whatever it is that the engineers, scientists, and researchers are making often misconstrues the “NEED’ and fails to meet expectations & resolve problems, ultimately culminating in a market failure. 

 

It may also take years to reach Market Fit and really match the heartbeat of the healthcare professionals or the patients. 

 

When the digital healthcare darling Babylon Health was founded by Ali Parsa, his visions and missions were majestic. It aimed at revolutionizing healthcare—the way GOOGLE transformed the concept of information today—making healthcare accessible to all. The platform was intended to collate AI and healthcare and help the NHS and its patients circumvent the long waitlists for consultations and procedures by interacting with patients early. 

 

But, internally, the “AI” was little more than basic decision trees, with help from ‘junior’ doctors. Despite this, hype around Babylon soared, landing deals with the NHS, Chinese tech giant Tencent, and a massive Saudi investment. The founder's relentless push for rapid expansion at Babylon Health outpaced the company's capacity to deliver functional products. 

 

 

They Did Hire Ex-Nhs Practitioners but Overlooked Their Involvement With the AI Tech Team—the ‘LACK OF NEXUS’. 

 

After joining Babylon, an NHS doctor once said that at a certain time, the company's data science team was constructing a knowledge graph that connected different bits of medical info based on mathematical probabilities. So here is a group of doctors answering thousands of complex medical questions, such as the possibility that someone with jaundice also has hepatitis, or what is the probability that if someone has ‘this’ symptoms, they are sure to have this disease. 

 

The knowledge graph COMPLETELY overlooked the lack of mathematical, 'stock' solutions to healthcare problems….Soon the questions became ridiculously irrelevant and disjointed, prompting the doctors to question the validity of the company’s work methods to launch a healthcare product. 

Babylon’s symptom-checking app, called the GP at Hand, aimed to alleviate NHS waiting times by automating patient inquiries and offering instant diagnoses to patients, met with many raised eyebrows in the medical fraternity. Similarly, Babylon boasted that its AI outperformed human doctors on diagnostic exams, a claim that also quickly met with aggressive criticism and skepticism from medical experts. By 2021, it went public that, at a $4.2 billion valuation, the company was soon to crash.

 

Similarly, DeepScribe, a startup that aimed to turn doctor-patient talks into usable medical records by using AI, faced technical issues and a lack of scrutiny and audits by healthcare professionals, leading to inaccurate records and improper use of 'medical terminology’ in reports. In the healthcare landscape, such oversights can be disastrous. 

 

These are just two of the many health tech initiatives that fall short of their envisioned success. 

 

Success is a STRONG TERM for all the key stakeholders in healthcare. 

Agree? 

 

One basic necessity for a SUCCESSFUL healthcare tech, concept, or device is its ability to seamlessly blend with the client’s needs—in healthcare, it is the  HCPs and their patients. One factor that’s crucial to this is the ‘design’ of the product.

 

What do I mean by design? 

 

I am no engineer and far from mechanical things and tech. In my understanding, the design includes the product design, its safety measures, scientific backup, and client engagement ability—that should be 'magical’ enough to make sure that it is adopted, adapted, and accepted not just immediately but in the long term—of course unless the next upgrade is launched.

 

One easy example of this that won't feel medical rocket science to you guys would be the surgical gowns. You know those robe-like things you often see the doctors in the operating theatres wear... Is everyone familiar with it? At least, all would have seen them in movies. Right…..?

 

The surgical gown is what I would say is a DESIGN-MASTERPIECE, human-centered right from its concept and anatomy, and built to truly serve its purpose. 

 

The gown’s design allows surgeons to put it on without touching the sterile outer layer. After scrubbing hands, the surgeon opens the neatly folded gown from its sterile packet and can slide it on without contamination.

 

Patented in 1973, how did such a basic yet vital healthcare product achieve its epitome of success?

 

By the NEXUS of human ergonomics (as understood by a healthcare professional) and the physics of cloth folding and unfolding (as understood by a textile engineer). It's hard to quantify what impact this ‘well-designed’ healthcare product has on successful surgeries, but its universal acceptability for decades underscores its market fit and value. 

 

The bottom line is ‘HUMAN CENTRICITY’. 

 

Understanding the ‘human factor’ is quintessential to building anything in health tech, because no matter what one’s building—a kickass machine, AI, or virtual reality—it all affects the human body and mind. 

 

Precisely why I, as a healthcare professional, must understand how my CT scanner machine or the client management (CRM) platform I use in practice works, and my engineering colleagues must know that the need for patient privacy, encryption, and shareability is a must in a CRM software or that I would prefer a 3D reconstruction tool integrated to the CT scanner to practice mock surgeries and explain to the patient what his surgery is going to look like. 

 

The end goal—there is a human user at the end, whose health or related aspects might be affected. 

 

If we look at the larger landscape, the human-centered design approach has taken the consumer product industry by storm. The best example of this would be the aviation industry. This sector improved its safety standards by analyzing human factors—how people physically and mentally interact with their surroundings, products, and services in emergencies and while travelling. 

 

However, healthcare technology has a long way to go. 

 

The knowledge gap, or the communication barrier, is sometimes so strong that it gets termed negligence. 

 

Mishaps keep happening at various levels.  

Key Takeaway

Anastomos, India’s first healthcare providers’ network, offers 10 services that empower healthcare professionals to understand patient care, medicine, and everything that runs behind the scenes in the healthcare industry. While doctors need a foundational grasp of technology, while engineers must understand medical workflows and clinical needs. And we are doing our share of educate the healthcare pros. 

 

Collaboration training programs, interdisciplinary curricula, and hands-on projects can all help to foster this nexus. Prioritizing this integration ensures impactful and patient-centered solutions. Learn more in Part 2 of this article.