The First Two Rules of Technology in Business...and How Pulsara Broke the Second

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Shane Elmore for writing today's blog post. Shane served as Pulsara's Vice President for Clinical Innovation and Development from 2013-2022. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. 

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"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency." -- Bill Gates

I love this quote from Bill Gates. But just recently, I changed my mind about what this quote means to me and what we, as tech companies, do with that information. When I first heard this quote, I took it to mean that if you have an inefficient process then technology won't help you. If you have an efficient process, then apply technology, and it will only make it better. Makes enough sense, right? 

BUT like every great rule, there's always an exception. 

In a recent visit with one of our Pulsara customers, I had an interesting conversation with a Project Manager onsite. I asked a simple enough question: "How are things going with Pulsara?" They had been live for about 6 months and I was a bit surprised with the answer, since I had gotten the impression things were going well. "Well ... Pulsara is working fine, but we're having issues." I held my breath, hoping for some good news. "Pulsara has caused some major problems for us."

Major problems caused by Pulsara?? Why would I be admitting this in a blog post?! You see, the problems Pulsara "caused" were really that the staff was now forced to face head-on some major inefficiencies lying dormant in their processes. "It's as if Pulsara has served as a mirror. It has brought some light to parts of our process that were really ugly and now we finally see them for what they really are and the issues they cause," said the Project Manager.

I shared with him the first & second rules of technology used in business ... including my new take on the Bill Gates quote. If you have an efficient hospital process, I assure you when you add the automation of Pulsara, we will magnify your efficiency. If you have an inefficient process though, Pulsara actually does not magnify the inefficiency ... instead, it magnifies the exact sources of the inefficiencies, requiring your teams to address and fix them. Without that mirror, it's possible that you'll never see the dark places where you can find the most improvement.

I spent the rest of the day walking through the new-found issues that came to light for this customer, and helped identify what could be done now and as an ongoing improvement process. Thanks to his honesty and transparency, the facility is now on its way to achieving great treatment time outcomes!

What inefficiencies will you find hidden away in your processes? There's only one way to find out!