BOSTON – Bringing new technology to your practice is not as simple as flipping a switch, as attendees of the Thursday afternoon AGA Tech Summit session “Physician Perspective on Barriers to Incorporating New Technology” learned. The Tech Summit is sponsored by the AGA Center for GI Innovation and Technology.
“As physicians think about being a part of taking on new technology, there are varying perspectives, including the perspective they have about their patients and the perspective they have for themselves,” Richard Rothstein, MD, chair of the department of medicine at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, N.H., said in an interview. “However, there are other perspectives as well, like the perspectives of the hospital or the ambulatory endoscopy center in which they work.”
He presented an intriguing historical example. Within months of the first demonstration of anesthetized surgery in 1846, the use of ether and the machine to deliver it were spreading rapidly through hospitals in large U.S. cities. European adoption soon followed.
However, decades passed before there was wide acceptance of Lister’s ideas on carbolic acid as a surgical antiseptic.
“Why was one technology adopted early and one later? Incentives to adopt both went in the same direction – improved patient outcomes. Both were based on ideas that violated prior beliefs. Both were technically complex. But one combatted a visible and immediate problem: pain. The other combatted an invisible and unproven problem: germs. Both made life better for the patient – but only one made life better for the surgeon. And that one, anesthesia, was the one that was quickly adopted.”
Even today, clinicians are the main drivers of the adoption of novel medical technology. They fall into two general categories, Dr. Rothstein said: early adopters, who want to be the first to offer an exciting new procedure, and late adopters, who wait for more information and want all the issues of that technology to be sorted out before diving in.
Each one stands in the same circle, however, forced to evaluate the issues that come along with adopting new tech, including training, credentialing and insurance, facility support, and how the new tool or procedure might affect the entire clinical team
