A few years ago I wrote a piece about smartwatches. It was around the time of the launch of the apple watch which was perceived as a flop. Last week I found myself in a clinical workplace that has been split into multiple zones, splitting teams up physically and increasing complexity. My need for information and communication has increased whilst PPE, gloves and facemasks have made the safe accessing and biometrical unlocking of my mobile devices almost impossible. Incidentally, it  also makes interacting with a computer quite difficult.

This has made me think a bit more about the watch, how that has slowly crept into my life and how it behaves as a companion product, a distraction sorting device.

In the NHS we know that distractions cause errors and that errors kill people. Simples. In the ED we say we take distraction very seriously. One example is that drug checking is done in a side room away from the hustle and bustle. Many of the constant distractions that pepper our day sit in a ‘too hard to tackle’ pile because generally no matter what a distraction is about we only have 3 ways of bringing anything to some-ones attention:

1-     Interrupt someone in person.

2-     Phone someone
3-     Page someone

Any of these interruptions could just as easily be a life-threatening emergency or a coffee with my name on it, or anything in-between. As a result all of these distract me twice. The initial distraction followed by trying to figure out the degree of engagement needed, a mental triage and decision.

In my other professional life, my watch has become my number 1 distraction filter. Messages from those companion apps whose notifications I want to simply know to exist so I can go to them in due course come to my watch via a haptic tap. No engaging with or even reading the message. Technology performs the triage to minimise the first distraction to virtually nothing, and cohorts the second engagement piece into a backlog that be dealt with more efficiently.

 

Those triaged as needing more immediate engagement go to my phone and demand attention. Like this I only engage with the phone (find, look at, unlock, digest, decide) when I actually need to. A phone call really rings the alarm bells, that is urgent.
We are at a time where we are meeting unprecedented challenges in the ways in which we work how we communicate and even the ease with which we can interact with technology. Whilst I’m not sure ED clinicians can get to the Deep Work nirvana of Cal Newman I do think we can use technology to stream our notifications into recognisable bundles of work we can complete like David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

 

I would prefer wrist taps to tell me I have ECG’s or patients to sign off or opinions to review, rather than a constant stream of interruptions. We use companion apps to help us perform focused tasks in our to day lives, why not in medicine? We have to understand what bits of our life devices can best help us with, and create apps for them. Just as digital desktop processes shouldn’t emulate paper processes, digital devices shouldn’t emulate digital desktops.

 

Lets innovate.