Self-service HIT options on the radar

While healthcare lags behind other industries in rolling out self-service technology, times may be changing. Very gradually, providers and health plans are launching self-service options, particularly kiosks, to streamline access to key information, following the lead of industries like retail and travel which have had them for many years. Right now, vendors are definitely ahead of providers when it comes such technology, but their enthusiasm may help drive things along. When giants like Microsoft plug self-service options as a great way to "improve patients satisfaction, the quality of care, and get a positive return on investment"--as the company's global healthcare industry manager Bill Crounse did recently--the deluge usually follows.

Self-service technologies in play include IVR, wireless tablet PCs, and SMS--and particularly, consumer-friendly kiosks. A growing list of hospitals, including Pennsylvania's Heritage Valley Health System and Columbus, Ohio-based Children's Hospital, are using kiosks to improve entry processes, with Heritage rolling out desktops and Children's using tablet PCs. Another player is Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, which, working with vendor Galvanon, rolled out kiosks in 2005 The Newark Beth Israel kiosks help with such necessities as routing patients through check-in and collecting co-pays.

One potential drawback to this approach, however, is that self-service technology can be pricey if providers want to allow access to complicated transactions. After all, it's one thing to slap an interface on a single database, and another to dynamically leverage data in varied enterprise systems. That's something providers will have to wrestle with in fairly soon, however, as it seems inevitable that healthcare will catch up with other vertical markets over time.

To find out more about this technology's progress:
- read this Bio-IT World item