A growing number of nurses are fielding direct pitches from healthcare technology vendors.
Nurses at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s annual conference in Las Vegas are noticing an uptick in companies selling technology aimed at their profession.
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“I have noticed there are more [vendors],” said Lavonia Thomas, nursing informatics officer at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “I think what they're doing is asking the questions [and] trying to understand what our pain points are but first we have to understand our [own] pain points.”
Houston-based MD Anderson brought 10 of its front-line nurses to the conference to observe different technologies and share ideas with their teams on what tools might be worthwhile investments. In particular, Thomas said they're looking at technology that can reduce documentation burdens that nurses face.
There is no shortage of options for MD Anderson to consider. In October, technology giant Microsoft partnered with EHR vendor Epic Systems along with several health systems to build an ambient AI tool for nurses. Abridge, another ambient clinical documentation vendor, said in an earlier interview it would prioritize creating its own ambient listening technology for nurses this year.
Beyond documentation, healthcare technology company Baxter announced a wearable badge for nurses on Tuesday called Voalte Linq that can power a virtual assistant to help them assist patients at risk of falling in the hospital. HIMSS also held a special forum on Monday to spotlight innovative nursing initiatives within healthcare.
While many nursing leaders said they were excited about the increased attention their field was receiving from vendors, some are skeptical. Gretchen Brown, vice president and chief nursing information officer at Stanford Healthcare, said implementing new technology that can't connect into existing nursing workflows would cause more harm than good.
“The clinicians are already telling us it's too much data in the environment to assimilate,” Brown said. “So, good job on implementing all that equipment, but now y'all have got to pull it together, and that's harder than you think.”
While Brown was open to adopting new technology, she said Stanford is pushing vendors to think about how their products integrate with existing systems such as electronic health records and patient medical devices like monitors, Brown said. Thomas at MD Anderson said there needs to be more collaboration with nurses when developing these technologies.
“If we don't listen to [nurses], we're going to continue to bring things in that they're going to have to work around,” Thomas said.
