How to free up time for healthcare professionals so they can focus on their patients

If you ever need to go to your local hospital for a procedure or a straightforward check-up, we all know it can be stressful, even unnerving. Meeting the healthcare professionals responsible for your care can quickly bring much-needed reassurance. It’s comforting to meet the people who are there to help you, who bring calm and confidence to an often-tense situation and who take the time to listen, care and talk through what you need to know.

But, while we all appreciate getting a healthcare professional’s full attention, what we may not see or understand is that they’re juggling any number of challenges every day. They’re often under immense pressure, dealing with increasing patient numbers and being understaffed, while having to manage time-consuming administrative tasks and all sorts of complexities.

Non-patient-facing tasks can suck up valuable time and take healthcare professionals away from caring for their patients and they’re feeling the impact. In one survey, 81% of doctors polled in the US said they were overworked, with 86% saying “they’re concerned about the American healthcare system’s ability to care for an ageing population.” In another, 71% of NHS staff polled in the UK – staff who have direct contact with patients – said they “did not have the amount of time they would like to have” to help patients.

I often hear these same scenarios. One healthcare professional recently shared with me, for instance, how frustrating and demoralizing it can be to get caught up with tasks that take them away from patient care. She then showed me how her department manually notes down information from one system, only to manually enter it into another.

Seeing and hearing these stories from healthcare professionals, I feel a responsibility to help spotlight the pressures they deal with daily – to help them, but also because these challenges ultimately affect us all. As the leader of an innovation company, it makes me even more determined to find ways technology can help. We should be doing all we can to ensure healthcare professionals feel supported, engaged and energized, instead of overloaded and overworked. This will help improve their everyday experiences, attract more people to work in healthcare and improve care.

I’m confident in all the ways technology can help. At the same time, I’m aware that much has been promised over the years about how technology will transform healthcare for the better. In some cases, new technologies haven’t helped in the ways intended, only adding to workloads and complexity. That’s why it’s so crucial we get it right. One of the best ways to help is to involve healthcare professionals at every step of the way and embed technology deeply into workflows because technology has to work for those who use it.

There are plenty of opportunities we can go after and healthcare leaders agree. In the Philips Future Health Index 2024 report, for example, a vast majority of healthcare leaders (92%) said they “think automation is critical for addressing staff shortages in healthcare by automating repetitive tasks and processes.” And this is just the beginning.

With everyone across the healthcare ecosystem helping, we can drive systemic change – and create a future where people everywhere have access to the care they need. Where health systems run smoothly, efficiently and sustainably, with healthcare professionals seeing the patient at the right time and at the right point of care. And, where healthcare professionals can be confident that the right choice is also the easy choice, with simple workflows enabling them to give patients the best care and best experience possible. This is the exciting potential on the horizon.

Tomorrow’s healthcare is a connected and accessible network of virtual and in-person care, with real-time and predictive insights supporting collaboration across the patient journey. With AI optimizing workflows and improving efficiency, clinical staff get the time and space to focus on what they do best – caring for their patients. That’s a future we all want to see, but we have some way to go.

Consider this: some nurses tell me they spend up to 20 minutes every hour on administrative tasks. What would it mean for them if we could reduce that to five minutes? Maybe more time to think and more time with patients.

Seemingly simple advances, supported by AI and other digital health technology, are already helping in huge ways. Here are some examples:

We can now help data freely flow across devices and systems. This gives healthcare professionals access to a single, standardized view of insightful data that can be accessed from anywhere in the hospital. When put into practice, this means healthcare professionals no longer have to go between different monitors and devices to piece together the patient’s story.

With all that data in one place, AI helps to make sense of all the different data streams and provides actionable insights. This can help healthcare professionals, for example, spot a patient’s deteriorating condition and, in turn, boost the care team’s confidence because they know they have much-needed support.

As pressure builds on hospitals, AI and other digital health technologies are helping virtual care teams watch over more patients. In rural areas, for example, remote guidance and support are starting to make a huge difference to patients, as well as healthcare professionals on the ground. AI is helping to detect the onset of emergent conditions.

These seemingly simple advancements free up time for healthcare professionals. When adopted at scale, the benefits will be significant – including improving the patient experience, partly, for example, due to shorter waiting times and shorter hospital visits. Such developments will continue to rapidly advance year by year, even month by month.

There are many ways we can improve things in healthcare. Rather than fear new developments, I believe we should explore the many possibilities, so we better understand what’s possible and can move forward responsibly, with patients and healthcare professionals at the centre.

Thinking about how to free up time is a simple, but powerful approach to addressing complexity in a practical way because freeing up time to care – I’d argue – leads to better care for more people.