Picture this: you’re stranded in the middle of the ocean. You’re treading water. Shoulders burning, lungs tight, waves crashing around you. Someone spots you from a boat and tosses you a chessboard. A few minutes later, another person hurls a lamp. Then someone else tosses a bulldog that can’t swim and now also needs rescuing.
Helpful? No.
Exhausted? Yes.
Alone and overwhelmed? Absolutely!
People are giving you “help” that is not at all helpful.
Welcome to modern healthcare.
Every day, providers, clinical leaders, and patients are out there treading water–mentally, emotionally, financially. And what are we handing them? Resources that are wrong, ill-timed, or not relevant to their actual problems.
Another widget. Another login. Another training. Another silo.
I’m not speaking in theoretical terms here. My wife, an oncologist for 17 years, succumbed to cancer herself at the age of 51. I witnessed the firsthand connection she had with her patients–over 19,000 of them throughout her career. If I had a dollar for everytime I heard my wife exclaim “What THE HELL am I supposed to do with that!?!?” when it came to a new rollout of whatever whack-a-mole point solution was being implemented for the day….
I also saw her drowning in antiquated processes over caring for her patients. Her alarm clock would go off every morning at 3:45 am. All the prep work had to be done before she ever saw her first patient at 9 am. To say she was treading water with her workload would be a vast understatement. I know she needed better tools that at that time didn’t exist. She muscled through the day-to-day until cancer claimed her life after an excruciating 11 months.
In healthcare, we ask too much of people already at their breaking point: doctors, patients, caregivers who are all just trying to stay afloat.
We Don’t Need More Digital Floaties.
Healthcare isn’t lacking digital tools. It’s drowning in them. Most are built with good intentions, designed to solve a specific issue: appointment reminders, intake forms, patient surveys, discharge instructions, symptom trackers, navigation apps, etc.
But healthcare doesn’t have an app shortage. It has a system problem. What’s missing are integrated, human-centered solutions, tools that fit within clinical workflows, that empower patients without piling on more work for providers, and that make care delivery more seamless.
Providers and patients don’t need more gadgets and gizmos. They’re desperate for something that meets their most urgent needs now. First, a flotation device to keep them from going under. Then, a sturdy boat, something built for the long haul. A slower, more deliberate solution that supports long-term care through coordination, clarity, and compassion.
Every disconnected app is like a tiny island in the middle of a massive ocean. Every new portal is just another compass without a map. And every tool that lives in its silo adds weight to the shoulders of burned-out providers and confused patients trying to stay afloat.
What they need isn’t another digital floatie.
We Need to Get Clinicians Out of Survival Mode
To quote Captain Brody of the movie Jaws “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” because the problems we have today are larger than the vessel we are using to triage the larger-than-life issues.
The Boat Healthcare Desperately Needs
We need a vessel that:
Let's stop with gadgets and gizmos and start with life-saving flotation devices to help clinicians keep their heads above water. Let’s build a better boat. I’m excited about what I see in Healthcare 3.0. We need passive workflows integrated with documentation of engagement. We need clarity, confidence, and real support that rebuilds the doctor-patient relationship. We need nimble frameworks that grow and morph with patient behavior. We need better predictive analytics that medical teams can get excited about. Real change comes when the medical team understands the “why” and can quickly see and experience the benefits to themselves and to their patients.
When a patient is guided properly, especially outside the care setting, confusion is reduced, avoidable utilization is manageable, and providers gain a clearer picture of the patient journey, freeing them to focus less on chasing data and onboarding new solutions, and more on delivering excellent care.
The future isn’t about adding more. It’s about connecting better. Fighting off the Jaws of today isn’t sustainable. We’re losing doctors, nurses, and care teams by the day and there are not enough new doctors and nurses to replace them. And who’s really surprised? Who signs up to catch a 35-foot shark from a 15-foot boat? The problem is too big with given our current fragmented solutions. The workload is too much. Who says, “I’ll have a great quality of life for the next 25 years” when considering a career in medicine today?
Without smarter, integrated workflows, we’re forcing people out of medicine by offering half-built solutions that don’t address the real barriers doctors and patients experience every day. We must build a boat strong enough to weather the storms, one that’s equipped with the right tools, guided by the voices of those on the front lines, and resilient enough to carry both providers and patients to better outcomes. A boat designed not just to stay afloat, but to move forward in a sustainable way for generations to come.
