Surfing the digital transformation wave: From adoption to excellence
Enabling meaningful human-centered support is crucial as the pace of change becomes more rapid and user fatigue is growing.
It started with a mouse and, from that, grew a way to bring both modernity and humanity to healthcare.
Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with a group of Fellows from the American College of Health Data Management to dive into the human side of health data management.
So often, we shape our digital and data discussion in healthcare on the technical aspects, but increasingly, there’s a need to reshape data discussions with a human first perspective.
Right out the gate, Andy Kinnear, a Fellow of the College and director at Ethical Healthcare Consulting, took us back to the early 1990s, to a moment that’s both nostalgic and instructive. Someone handed him a mouse and said he’d need it to use a screen. He had done everything by keyboard until then. "It was genuinely intimidating," he said.
That first encounter with digital transformation stuck with him. A few years later, the Internet arrived. The landscape changed again. Rapid change isn’t new in healthcare; it’s the pace and fatigue that feel different now.
"The energy to keep up is tougher," Kinnear said. That’s a truth many in healthcare leadership feel, even if they don’t say it out loud. "That’s why we need younger, dynamic people around us to keep us afloat, to push us forward," Kinnear added.
That’s the tension we’re in right now. We’ve got big waves coming, whether its AI, gen AI, agentic AI, ambient clinical intelligence, connected infrastructure, unified data governance vs democratized data stewardship, and even quantum computing. We’re trying to decide whether we’re surfing or getting pulled under.
Clinicians aren’t sitting on the beach
Dr. Stephanie Lahr, also an ACHDM Fellow and chief experience officer at Artisight, shared a story that perfectly captured that feeling. Her son is a surfer. They live in South Dakota, so they have to travel to find waves. And when he gets there? He wants the biggest ones he can find – even ones for which he may not be ready.
"No surfer sits on the beach and says, ‘Glad it’s calm out there,’ " Lahr said. "They want waves. They want to test themselves. That’s how you grow."
That’s true of clinicians, too. They’re not scared of digital tools. Rather, they’re hungry for tools that help and that actually work. But too often, we give them a half-finished solution and expect full-blown enthusiasm.
"We’ve handed them systems that weren’t designed for them,” Lahr noted. “And now, after years of disappointment, we expect them to be excited?"
It doesn’t work that way, not anymore. And honestly, that’s on us.
The education inflection point
Liz Griffith, an ACHDM Fellow and director or client insights at uPerform, brought us back to a moment that changed everything. Before COVID-19, she said, "We were constantly telling people, you've got to find a way to get your people into training." Education lived in classrooms, conference rooms and structured sessions.
Then the world changed overnight. "We could no longer put people in a room together," she said. "We had to find a way to bring education to clinicians at the point of care."
That pivot wasn’t just a logistics fix. It forced a philosophical shift – from centralized training to embedded learning, and from scheduled sessions to real-time support.
"Technology has done nothing but exponentially grow," Griffith said. "If we don’t have the means and methods to stay on top of it from an education perspective, we get buried."
The health systems that thrived during and after the pandemic have leaned into this shift and became strategic. They brought education out of the classroom and into the workflow. That’s what enabled some to ride the wave, while others got pulled under.
Let’s talk about excellence
Lahr offered a powerful reframe for two words that are thrown around a lot in health IT: adoption and optimization. "Adoption is acceptance," she said. "Optimization is excellence."
The distinction is subtle but important. Adoption gets organizations to go-live; it gets systems in place. But excellence is what actually improves care and what gives time back to clinicians. It’s what lets nurses breathe again on a 12-hour shift.
Griffith gave us the proof. At uPerform, she’s seen the difference when education is embedded in the workflow, not just bolted on. She shared the story of Aspirus Health, where nurses saved 40 minutes per shift after embedded training went live.
"That’s not just efficiency," she said. "That’s better care. That’s time to think, to connect, to recover."
The boardroom disconnect
So here’s the question: if excellence is the goal, why do so many systems stop at adoption? Lahr explains it by saying that "Because that’s where the funding stops."
"If you want the board’s attention, scare them with money or patient safety,” Kinnear added. “Otherwise, it’s hard to make the case."
He’s not wrong. Most organizations still struggle to fund implementations beyond go-live. But we can’t afford to keep doing that. Optimization isn’t fluff. It’s not bonus work. It’s the whole point.
And when we skip it, clinicians feel it. Griffith has seen that firsthand. "Every dollar invested in education is a signal to your clinicians that they matter," she said. "That you’re backing them. And they know when you’re not."
A trust issue
Clinicians disengage not because they’re difficult, but because we failed to build trust. Kinnear brought the conversation back to something that’s not discussed enough – emotional fatigue.
"We’ve asked a lot of our clinicians over the last decade," he said. "Underfunding, pandemic trauma, staffing shortages. They’re not change-resistant. They’re tired."
And yet, he still sees something powerful in them.
"Clinicians are kind," Kinnear said. "They chose to care for strangers. If you show them you respect their experience, they’ll meet you halfway."
"Change is only hard for the unready. And readiness? That’s on all of us," Lahr added.
We can’t expect clinicians to carry transformation on their backs. We have to prepare the ground, not just plant the seed.
What readiness looks like
It looks like personalization. "Every clinician doesn’t need everything," Griffith said. "They need the right thing, at the right time."
It looks like access. Unified education. No more scavenger hunts for knowledge spread across ten different portals.
"Streamlining access to knowledge is one of the most powerful forms of support we can offer,” Griffith said.
It also looks like empathy. Kinnear told a story abourt a GP who resisted a shared record rollout for over a year, citing legal issues. Over dinner with him, Kinnear discovered the real reason – the doctor had written notes in those records about which he was embarrassed, and he didn’t want to be judged.
"The presenting issue isn’t always the real issue," Kinnear said. "It’s usually fear. And once you know that, you can do something about it."
Mitchell Josephson is president of the American College of Health Data Management and CEO of Health Data Management.