Health Care Special Report: Even High Tech Needs Human Touch

As chief executive at enBio Corp., Arthur Zenian looks at the future from the inside out. The Burbank company repairs and maintains hospital machines, including X-ray scanners, magnetic resonance imaging units and vital signs monitors. From his perspective, the next step in medicine will be the ability of a patient’s medical file – including blood sample results and prescriptions – to be available to machines, not just doctors and nurses. For example, an infusion pump could check a patient’s medical file to make sure the correct drug is feeding into the IV tube at the proper rate. “Not everyone has the money to move that infrastructure, but eventually, all hospitals will have to,” he said. Getting to that future is a one-step-at-a-time journey that Zenian knows all too well. For example, EnBio has already run into a very practical roadblock: a lack of qualified repair technicians. Traditionally, Zenian hired people with hospital backgrounds, but the new machines require software expertise. And while recent graduates understand the IT, they can’t relate to patient needs or the hospital setting. “We need people who understand the physiology as well as the IT integration,” he said. “There is a training portion that we have to handle.” Also an issue is protecting all that patient’s information transmitting wirelessly around a hospital. There is a risk it can fall into the wrong hands, which would expose hospitals to violations of the federal Health Information Privacy Protection Act, or HIPPA. Martin Gallegos, senior vice president at the Hospital Association of Southern California in Los Angeles, said it’s almost certain the state will weigh in with new regulations involving hospital technology. “As we move into each new stage of technological advancement, you’re likely to see a new set of regulations to deal with it,” he said. “That’s California.” However, Laura Jacobs, executive vice president at health care consultancy Camden Group in El Segundo, said that health organizations already have a “need-to-know” protocol for HIPPA compliance. She is more concerned about whether the new generation of wireless, smart machines will perform well in the field. “There are still technical and financial and practical barriers. People are investing in their own systems, and how well will they integrate over time remains to be seen. We can pool all this information, but the accuracy isn’t perfect,” she said. Zenian also cites costs and traditional reimbursement as a roadblock. While the initial transition to digital systems is expensive, hospitals will realize savings once insurance compliance, billings and other administrative tasks are automated. However, when new technology threatens traditional hourly billing or fee-for-service regimens, he sees some pushback. “If technology takes away a doctor’s time from an operation, they are afraid to invest in it because their reimbursement goes down,” he said.