Google Glass Plus The Checklist Manifesto

I continue to think about all the cool ways that Google Glass could be used to change healthcare.  Here’s my thought from today.

You could combine The Checklist Manifesto concept with Google Glass to allow surgeons to be reminded of the things they need to do with a patient while they were during the encounter or during the procedure.

In complex situations – such as those which arise in almost every profession and industry today – the solutions to problems are technical and demanding. There are often a variety of different ways to solve a problem. It’s all too easy to get so caught up dealing with all these complexities that the most obvious and common sense immediate solutions are not tried first. To overcome this problem, take a leaf from the commercial aviation industry and develop checklists people can use to make sure every base is covered quickly and concisely. Checklists are a forgotten or ignored business tool. It’s time for them to come in from the cold. 

“Here, then, is our situation at the start of the twenty-first century:We have accumulated stupendous know-how. We have put it in the hands of some of the most highly trained, highly skilled, and hardworking people in our society. And with it, they have accomplished extraordinary things. Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields – from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our human inadequacies. And there is such a strategy – though it will seem almost ridiculous in its simplicity, maybe even crazy to those of us who have spent years carefully developing ever more advanced skills and technologies. It is a checklist.”

(This is from this PDF on The Checklist Manifesto.)

Here’s an example of a checklist from the WHO.