Are Short Attention Spans Driving Health Tech?
Amid a tech-centered existence, human attention spans are frequently, unironically likened to that of a goldfish. In fact, recent data shows people’s ability to focus on a single screen has plummeted yet again. Today, you can expect to remain attuned to a task on your laptop for a whopping 47 seconds before your seemingly autonomous fingers reach to unlock your phone, change the TV channel or tap a high-pitched notification on a different digital device.
While the new decade’s technological advancements have accelerated progress across nearly every sector, this supercharged circuitry has also permeated the human psyche. For better or worse, a digital experience must occur in seconds for it to be deemed adequate by consumer standards.
Now, with even essential fields including healthcare at risk of being nixed by preoccupied consumers, high-tech alternatives have rapidly taken shape. Yet despite a recent report proclaiming health tech an industry leader in digital-first business strategies, a reasonable suspicion remains: Is high-end health tech truly the best match for average consumers, or are short attention spans demanding a digital future that crops out the fundamentals for a more stylish but less functional frame?
Why Most Digital Strategies Fail
Despite statistics that show 70 percent of all digital transformations fail, the vast majority of companies have continued full steam ahead in their technological transitions, hoping to join fellow industry leaders in forging a tech-savvy future. So, what’s the problem? Forcing rapid, high-tech advancements at the expense of a well-rounded digital strategy leads to platforms steeped with learning curves for both business owners and consumers. In short, increasing complexity to keep pace with flashy trends often equates to greater problems, not greater end products.
Consumer Experience Matters Most
Data shows experience-led technology, which prioritizes the consumer, fares the best in profitable tech transformations, yet only 31 percent of companies follow the experiential outline. What characteristics contribute to a good consumer experience?
When examining the evolving sphere of health tech, the key touchpoints of a positive, in-person healthcare experience must remain intact when transitioned to a digital platform. For example, accessibility, trustworthiness and accuracy are all essential carry-overs.
Despite the need to retain core characteristics of an in-person experience, there is one component that must significantly shift when healthcare is digitized: the time it takes to select, schedule and complete a health exam. Health tech companies undergoing digital transitions have to considerably crunch this process down to appease the flittering attention span on the other end of the device, or risk losing potential customers.
A Proposition: Simplified Health Tech
The success of Uber, the powerhouse ride-hailing and delivery platform, is an important lesson in simplification. By creating a mobile app that was by no means extraordinary yet by all standards consumer-friendly, Uber offered an experience that people were willing to return to again and again. So, what can health tech companies learn from a ride-hailing app?
Proposition-simplifying is a business strategy in which a company creates a premium market via a service rooted in consumer-facing simplicity. It is also Uber’s expertly executed success tactic. Through ease of use, consumers learn to trust and enjoy their experience with the service, slowly eliminating clunky alternatives. Healthcare, like ride services, is an industry rooted in feelings of comfort and trust. If a user isn’t comfortable navigating a digital healthcare platform, they likely won’t return to it.
Lessons Health Tech Learned from Uber
In the field, leading health tech platforms like Haled Care are capitalizing on this relationship, prioritizing consumer experience with simplified processes that cater to users’ comfort levels as well as their attention spans. Through Haled Care’s three-step system, users, businesses and examiners can complete healthcare processes without unnecessary automations and added complexities.
What Haled Care offers consumers is the reliability of a doctor’s office in the comfort of their homes, all scheduled with the tap of a few buttons on their personal devices. It’s the practical, no-frills intersection of trustworthy, in-person healthcare and expedited digital scheduling.
Into the Digital Future
Despite ever-changing waves of industry influence, what health tech companies like Haled Care are learning is that true technological advancement is often a misnomer for digital simplification.
With only 47 seconds to spare, getting back to the basics could be the unexpected, ironic future of digital transformations.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/11/health/short-attention-span-wellness/index.html
https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/price-simplifying-vs-proposition-simplifying/282219
