Lost in apps – healthcare’s cry for unity

Alex Raychuk, founder & CEO at Medentee Ltd., delivered a keynote address today during the final day of the Med-Tech World Summit held at the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Valletta, Malta.  The Med-Tech World Summit is an annual event that brings together companies, start-ups, investors, professionals, and media from the world of healthcare technology.

Fragmented communication channels

In his keynote speech Raychuk focused on one of the major problems in the healthcare industry, namely fragmented communication channels and how healthcare professionals, caught in the middle, are carrying the burden.  He said that “looking at the industry from the outside, there is a real mess, there are too many channels and too much information to process. How can our hero, the single healthcare professional, handle everything?”

Raychuk introduced his speech by explaining how healthcare professionals are at the centre of the industry, juggling communication across professional communities, during professional events, with other professionals and in work organizations like hospitals and clinics. Each organization decides which application or platform to use, and all healthcare professionals, employees and service providers must align. The problem is exacerbated if healthcare professionals work in different organizations, having to navigate different apps, passwords and profiles.

Master jugglers?

When considering communities, healthcare professionals navigate networking, follow news and live events. Communication is happening over emails, social media, Whatsapp groups and so many more. Raychuk asks: “Who does not have the freedom to choose? Who carries the whole burden?” His answer is simple, “the healthcare professional, who is actually carrying all the workload”.

The same scenario unfolds when Raychuk considers professional events – mobile applications, meeting scheduling and events apps which health professionals download and use for just a few days at best. Again, when considering meetings, health professionals need to align to many apps and tools, such as Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and many others.

Raychuk asked an important question, “In order to avoid becoming master jugglers, how do healthcare professionals decide which app to choose?” He professed a solution, namely, unified professional platforms, where a radical shift in perspective means that the focus is not on what works for the organisation, but what works for the individual healthcare professional.

Unified professional platforms – Medentee’s solution

Raychuk said that Medentee decided to take on this challenge and after 3 years of development they are ready to launch an app which signifies the first attempt to solve this problem. Medentee are pioneers in the space, thinking in terms of communication channels of healthcare professionals and not in terms of organisations. “The healthcare organisation will align with healthcare professionals according to what is convenient to the professionals, and not the other way round.”

Raychuk concluded his keynote by inviting the audience to “think in terms of how the whole industry can simplify the lives of healthcare professionals in order to free their time to give better care to patients.”

Speaking at the fringe of the summit to SiGMA News following his keynote delivery, Raychuk added that too few players in the market think about what the individual health professional needs and instead focus on solutions for big organisations. Medentee’s product is still a B2B solution, but the focus is on providing a solution for healthcare professionals to ease the burden of the overwhelming overload of information.