Magazine
Articles on organisation, communication and software in Swiss healthcare. Written for people who run a practice, not for search engines. Where there is a number, there is also a source.
Artificial intelligence has arrived in daily practice, but not everywhere it was promised. Six applications, each with what it takes off your desk today and what it leaves behind.
Germany is further ahead than Switzerland on secure communication in healthcare — and has an expensive failed attempt behind it. Both are instructive; the failure more so.
Every practice knows time is being lost. Almost none knows where. The difference between a change that helps and one that only causes unrest is a week with a notepad.
There is no shortage of advice on how to conduct a conversation, and it helps little. What fails in healthcare fails not in the conversation but at the handovers in between.
The short answer is 42,602. The longer one explains why that number is rising while care is getting tighter — and why every figure here carries its reference year.
Messages are the fastest way to settle a question, and the shortest route to a breach of professional secrecy. What the law requires of a messenger in a practice, and how to tell whether a service meets it.
Nobody disputes that collaboration between the professions would be better. It nonetheless rarely happens — for four reasons, only two of which are in a practice's hands.
An image archive of your own is thought of as a radiology matter. For a practice with one X-ray unit or an ultrasound the calculation is different — and it does not always come out in favour.
That WhatsApp has no place in the consulting room is quickly explained. The harder question comes next: how does a team that has communicated this way for years actually get off it?
There is no honest urgent answer to "why now". There is, however, a calculation, and it can be drawn up in a week.
Practices differ in almost everything, but four workflows occur everywhere — and stall everywhere at the same points. What blocks them and what helps.
Email is convenient, available everywhere, and the wrong route for health data. Not because of a rule, but because of three properties built into the protocol itself.
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