Is Technology All That Beneficial?

I took my daughter to the hospital for some X-rays the other day, registering at the imaging center's front desk, then proceeding to a registration desk to continue the process.

We were at the end of the registration process when the registrar handed me a wireless device to complete the registration and health insurance verification process.

No training, just a hand extended in my direction with a device in it.

The woman said that I needed to verify my insurance information and my daughter's demographic information.

The more screens that I tapped with the stylus, the more difficult the seemingly simple task became. I clicked on a date field and the stylus clicked off September instead of October for my daughter's birth month. The woman helped me scroll backwards on the screen, so I could re-enter the correct month.

I even commented to the woman that I write about technology for a health care IT magazine, but was finding the process difficult.

"Someone wanted it," was her off-handed response.

Is that where we are with technology today? Someone wanted it, so it's implemented? It sounds simple, so I'm guessing that it's more complex than that.

I clicked another field incorrectly and had to get assistance to scroll back to the previous screen. Here I was with a device whose screen was smaller than a legal pad, and I was having difficulty using a stylus.

I couldn't imagine someone trying to use this device for the first time. I wondered how an elderly patient would fare when faced with such a task.

Older patients actually have an easier time of it than us "young folks," the woman said. She must have been laughing inside, thinking that this guy who writes about technology could not grasp the nuances of modern technology. She attributed the elderly patients' adaptation in using the technology more easily because they have to use it in their everyday lives.

That's probably true, because the last time I was at this particular hospital was when my daughter was born 10 years earlier.

So, I came away from this experience with two things to remember as technology is implemented at your hospital: (1) Someone wanted it -- the technology, that is, and (2) it's for the "older folks."