A few years ago, after closing a $7 million deal, we walked into another hospital with a lot of confidence. We had the tested system with solid data and proven outcomes. From a technology perspective, we knew we were bringing something that worked. But the conversations at this hospital kept returning to the same sentence, “That’s not how we do it here.”

At first, I thought we were having a discussion about the software. But eventually, I realised that technology was not the real issue. The real issue was much more human.

The Expertise Built Around Broken Processes

Healthcare has no shortage of complicated systems. Patient information can move between health records, lab systems, billing systems, paper documents and, sometimes, simply from one person's memory to another. The result is fragmented information and disconnected workflows. We know these problems exist. Healthcare organisations spend huge amounts of money trying to solve them through digital systems, automation and artificial intelligence. Still, introducing a better system does not automatically mean people will adopt it.

Consider someone who has spent 15 years learning how to navigate a difficult process. They know which department to call, which form to use, and where information is likely to be missing and how to find it. From the outside, this looks like inefficiency. From their perspective, it is expertise. They have spent years becoming good at something that was never supposed to be this difficult in the first place. So, when a new technology arrives and says that they do not need to do it this way anymore, it can feel like more than a process change.

For someone whose professional identity has been built around solving problems in the old system, removing those problems can create an unexpected question, “If the system no longer needs me to solve these problems, what happens to the value of my experience?” That is a much deeper concern than whether a software interface is easy to use, and it explains why a technically superior product can still struggle to gain adoption.

The Gap Between Healthcare Innovation and Reality

Healthcare organisations are under constant pressure to improve. They want faster decisions, better coordination between departments, and they want to reduce administrative work and give clinicians more time to focus on patients. Technology can help deliver all of these things. But healthcare is also one of the most complex environments in which to introduce change.

A hospital is not simply a collection of computers and databases. It is a network of people, responsibilities, habits, regulations, professional standards and years of accumulated experience. A workflow that looks irrational on a whiteboard may have developed for a reason. An administrator may maintain a spreadsheet because several systems cannot communicate with each other. Over time, these workarounds become normal. They become “the way we do things here.” It is when transformation becomes difficult.

Imagine asking an experienced employee to abandon a process they have mastered for years. You may be offering them something objectively better. They experience it through their own history. The old process represents competence while the new process represents uncertainty. The old system is familiar and the new system requires learning. Also, the old workflow makes them feel experienced and the new workflow may temporarily make them feel like beginners again. Here, familiar inefficiency can feel safer than unfamiliar improvement.

Why Technology Alone Cannot Transform Healthcare

Organisations invest heavily in technology and assume adoption will follow. They focus on implementation timelines, integrations, dashboards, features and performance. All of those things matter but successful transformation requires another layer of helping people understand what the change means for them.

When employees see technology as something being imposed on them, resistance is natural. When they see it as something that removes unnecessary work, reduces frustration and allows them to spend more time doing what they are actually good at, adoption becomes much easier.

There is another uncomfortable part of transformation. Admitting that the old way really was wrong not because the people using it were incapable, but because the system itself evolved without being redesigned can be difficult. People naturally defend decisions they have made for years. Organisations do the same. But transformation requires a willingness to question assumptions that once made sense.

• What if this step is unnecessary?
• What if this information should not have to be entered twice?
• What if the process we have become very good at navigating should not exist in its current form at all?

These questions can be uncomfortable but necessary ones. The goal is not to erase expertise but to redirect it. That is the promise of good technology.

The Future of Technology Is Human-Centred

The lesson from that hospital stayed with me. When people repeatedly say, “That's not how we do it here,” the answer should not always be to push harder. The answer can reveal far more than a technical requirements document ever will. They can uncover years of institutional knowledge, hidden dependencies, workarounds, operational challenges and frustrations that are easy to miss when designing a new healthcare technology solution. More importantly, it can reveal what people are afraid of losing.

As a healthtech leader, I see it as an important part of building technology that actually works in the real world. Healthcare is not simply another industry where a new healthtech platform can be introduced and expected to change behaviour overnight. Doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators and other healthcare professionals develop deeply established workflows around their experience. Any meaningful digital transformation in healthcare has to recognise that reality. The objective for us is to create a better way of working without making the people who built the old way feel like their experience no longer matters.

So, what is harder to change? Technology is often the easiest part. People are different. They have memories, habits, experience, pride, fear and professional identities. They do not just learn systems. They build their careers around them.

With every successful digital transformation project, you are not only changing technology but you are also changing the relationship people have with the way they work. It requires listening, trust, empathy and showing people that their experience is being used to build something better. Technology can open the door. People still have to be willing to walk through it.

What do you think is harder to change, the technology or the people who have built their careers around the old way of working?