[ryanteo]

Just a comment from Asia (Singapore). It's rather difficult to get doctors or medical personnel to adopt new technologies. The nature of the industry selects people who are trained to behave very cautiously, as it concerns life and death. The healthcare industry is also very fragmented geographically due to necessary regulation. This makes it difficult to scale, as each location may have its own set of legal, medical, safety and privacy requirements. Doctors are also used to pen and paper. An example we saw when visiting our clients is the use of a touch screen tablet for taking patient's notes. Basically, it just replaces a paper notepad with a digital notepad. The doctors fundamentally do not change their behaviour or actions. However, there are changes happening with the advent of electronic medical health records and the integration of the internet to connect the various systems.

Another point would be the costs involved. Everyone seems to charge some insane multiple once it's healthcare-related, even though it's just the same hardware/software.

I guess there's a lot to talk about and discuss, drop me an email if you are interested. I'm also pretty sure the DrChrono guys (I've seen them post on HN before, I think) can chip in with a few insights from their end.

When designing systems for doctors, you really need to talk to them and watch them use your product/platform/software/website. There are a lot of idiosyncrasies/terminology involved which an outsider is unable to grasp easily.