Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lonelappde 2324 days ago
What happens when the disease in my body declines to adapt to Epic's standardized workflow?
3 comments

Helsinki recently adopted Epic (under the local branding “Apotti”).

One hospital death has already been confirmed as being due to UX difficulties with the new system. Link in Finnish: https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000006391154.html

Not to downplay that tragedy, but we don't have any information on how many deaths were prevented by switching away from their old system.
In Denmark, a country of approximately 6 million people, there are three different regions running the public hospitals. Two of the three regions choose a custom system, whereas the third choose Epic.

The results apparently doesn’t favor Epic in that it costs 4-5 times as much [1] and has caused productivity loss 1.5 years after implementation [2] (links in danish)

Still don’t know if is a fair comparison though, since you probably pay the costs of adhering to process to start off with and only reap the benefits later. However the Epic implementation has also been bug riddled and I’ve also read that the procedures are designed for a litigation happy US and thus are not rational to apply here.

[1] https://www.computerworld.dk/art/248393/sundhedsplatformen-e...

[2] https://www.rigsrevisionen.dk/media/2104845/sr1717.pdf

probably nothing good, but the alternate question is, what happens to the well-being of patients overall if no standardized workflow exists, what error rate and dysfunction will it produce across the entire system?

Complaining about large corporate structures failing to meet individual needs is always a very appealing criticism, but people rarely seem to point out that these large behemoths need to be judged by their overall throughput.

The mass of people who benefit from standardized workflows are always anonymous, the failure cases always have a face, but it doesn't mean the trade-off isn't net positive.

Enterprises don't care at the micro level. There's near infinite more that do and that's where they make money.
There's also a lot more suffering to be averted. Simple standardized things like following basic protocols to reduce errors (handwashing, surgical instrument inventory) or encouraging better patient compliance (taking meds regularly, for instance) save tons of lives.