Eliminating Pagers and Faxes: The Real Moonshot in Healthcare
MEDIGRAM 3.0: Driven by People, Process, & Technology
There are technical, people, and process reasons for why faxes and pagers still dominate in healthcare; just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not urgent to fix.
Why do we do what we do at Medigram? We lose a life every 9 minutes according to the esteemed Institute for Healthcare Improvement due to a delay in medical information. Inefficient communication is also highly distressing for physicians who work in “time is tissue” clinical areas. Hospitals also lose 11B a year or $728K each on average. This mirrors the size, scale of the TAM for secure communication in healthcare.
The Medigram solution is purpose built technology to meet the needs of medicine and we’re ramping into launching V3.
Version 1 was a prototype that was loved by users but required constant internet which is a no go in healthcare.
Version 2 addressed solving for usability research that had been published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. It worked when nothing else did on mobile phones.
Version 3 is about solving and delivering value for the institution with programs leveraging a medical grade whatsapp type technical functionality.
We combine our unique mobile medical grade “Whatsapp like” technical messaging solution with a sophisticated service design and implementation model. We leverage world industry leading privacy and cybersecurity with it all.
Our system and service with Medigram AI is to enable:
- Better utilization management and resource allocation
- Deliver improved safety and quality for financial returns and more.
In this article, our goal is to share our mission, passion, and focus at Medigram and we cover the following:
- Clear iteration of the “problem” and the root cause of that problem
- Define the pain point in relation to the stakeholders
- Articulation of the desired outcome and solution being proposed
- Explain what sets us apart from others
The problem:
The (unrelated to Medigram) problem of failed messaging deployment is well described in an NPR podcast about the physician driven academic medical center technology deployment.
The technology deployment was championed by ER physicians to modernize communication with secure messaging. Though physicians are key to all clinical programs; there should also be a lot of management, leadership, and process deployed for real organizational success in any clinically facing deployment of IT.
Background/Problem described in this NPR podcast:
Residents were overwhelmed by a flood of messages that led to physicians rejecting and ignoring the use of the app. ER physicians had to retreat to pagers to reach the residents. This means that paging can’t be directly replaced with messaging without a well thought out workflow plan and policy.
Assessment of Situation described through the NPR/UCSF podcast
It was a failed implementation that reminds us of the “elephant problem,” one that is hard but worth solving.
There must be motivation at the highest level of the institution also with physicians that champion the project.
Recommendation:
The Medigram team believes that success can be driven by securing executive buy-in and solving the problems of implementation, governance, and the hard technical challenges.
Medigram is designed to work with the lowest levels of connectivity where others don’t. If you want to explore why most chat and mobile apps in general don’t work much of the time for mobile devices in hospitals, you can explore the technical details here. Details of physics are also why AI driven chatbots have nothing to do with what Medigram does, which is driving communication when nothing else works.
Process and people are required
Services are required in medical technology. Services are needed to support clinical quality impact of workflow, process engineering, LEAN, change management, and finance impacts of quality –all required for success from an institutional perspective.
A Working group for governance with all the affected functions must be front loaded into the program:
Care team buy-in was not mobilized within the UCSF project. Learn more about how industry leaders think about working groups here:
Critical performance KPIs should be targeted as a program to drive clinical quality and financial results:
Though it may not be difficult to build a MVP or prototype. We believe that a V3+ version of the product is needed with robust implementation and process improvement that delivers results to patients, clinicians, and organizations.
Resource: NPR podcast: Why secure text messaging implementation at an academic medical center failed: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/08/1197955913/doctors-pagers-beepers
To build the capabilities for success and scale, the Medigram team leads what’s recognized as the industry’s top ecosystem for Trustworthy Technology and Innovation. You can learn about it here.
Acknowledgments: Matt Partridge, Dr. Art Douville, Jeff Lewis, Jennifer Heddy, Anthony Lee, Karen Jaw Madson, and Allison J. Taylor all contributed to this article.
About the CEO of Medigram:
Sherri Douville is CEO at Medigram, the Mobile Medicine company driving safety, efficiency, and profitability for health systems as well as editor for our 4th book on AI and Cybersecurity for Healthcare Boards (forthcoming). She is series editor with top healthcare IT academic publisher, Taylor & Francis based in the U.K. She is known for aligning engineering, IT, physician leaders, informatics, and legal across the industry. The contributing team of teams in the book series comprise top experts across all relevant required domains to make healthcare IT work in the age of AI and Cybersecurity. It is recognized as the top ecosystem of the best of the best experts, comprising over 100 coauthors and editorial reviewers. She has taught accredited CME, CPE for CISSP three times, and continues to provide leadership as co-chair of trust for the industry’s IEEE/UL P2933 full stack technical standard. She also served on the healthcare CIO leadership group, CHIME certification committee for cybersecurity. She is honored to have given dozens of talks, keynotes, guest lectures, and podcasts including for multiple professional societies such as the American Board of AI in Medicine, ABAIM, to governments worldwide, the Ivy league and internationally. She launched and taught corporate board education for privacy and cybersecurity at Santa Clara University from which she has a B.S. degree in Combined Sciences. She has also completed certificates in AI and ML through MIT in the R programming language. She believes that by building the leaders and networks that the industry needs; we can deliver rapid technology enabled transformation through groundbreaking companies such as Medigram. This drives everything she does.
