Why Technology Fails in Healthcare (When Processes Are Missing)

2026

The Illusion of Technology as a Solution for Everything

We bought the system. And we still have the same problems.

In previous articles we talked about neglecting operations management and the silent financial waste that corrodes healthcare systems. Today I want to talk about a trap that many managers know well, but into which we continue to fall.

There is a widespread belief in healthcare: if the problem is operational, the solution is technological.

Are the processes slow? We bought a system.

Is the information scattered? We’ve implemented a platform.

Are waiting lists growing? We’ve digitized the scheduling process.

The intention is good. The logic, at first glance, makes sense. The result, too often, is an expensive disappointment.

The Biggest Technological Failure in the Public Sector: The NPfIT Case

In 2002, the British government launched the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), the largest civilian information technology program ever attempted in the world. The goal was noble: to digitize the NHS, create integrated electronic records for every patient in England, and connect 30,000 family doctors to 300 hospitals.

The project was launched with an initial budget of £6.2 billion. Nine years later, in September 2011, it was officially dismantled. The total cost exceeded £9.8 billion, with estimated benefits of only £3.7 billion, half of what was invested. The Public Accounts Committee of the British Parliament classified it as “one of the worst and most expensive procurement fiascos in the history of the public sector.”

What went wrong? It wasn’t a lack of money. It wasn’t a lack of ambition. It was something much more fundamental.

The project failed to adequately involve end users, lacked a phased approach to change management, and underestimated the scale of the transformation required.

In short: they implemented technology without preparing the processes and the people who were going to use it.

Source: Campion-Awwad O. et al. (2014). The National Program for IT in the NHS: A Case History. University of Cambridge. / UK Parliament Public Accounts Committee (2013). Dismantled National Program for IT in NHS.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/archive/rja14/Papers/npfit-mpp-2014-case-history.pdf

Technology without process is merely the automation of inefficiency.

This is not an isolated case. It’s a pattern.

Only 38% of healthcare leaders consider their implementations of electronic health record systems to have been successful, according to a 2025 KLAS Research report… In a sector that invests billions in digital transformation every year.

The reasons are almost always the same. 34% of organizations point to change management and adoption as the main barrier, and 30% identify inadequate training as a critical challenge. It’s not the software that fails, it’s everything around it that has never been truly worked on.

There is also a consequence that rarely appears in implementation reports: the impact on professionals. A study by Stanford University concluded that 74% of physicians reported an increase in working hours after the implementation of electronic record-keeping systems, with 71% attributing their burnout directly to these systems.

We bought into the hope of efficiency. We generated exhaustion.

Sources: KLAS Research / Arch Collaborative Report (2025). EHR Implementation Success. / Stanford Medicine (referenced in EHRinPractice, 2024).

https://klasresearch.com/archcollaborative/report/ehr-implementations-2025/628

The problem is not the technology.

It’s important to make it clear: technology is not the enemy; in fact, it’s a fundamental element to consider. Electronic records, intelligent scheduling systems, and clinical decision support platforms all have a genuinely transformative role when implemented correctly.

The problem isn’t the sequence. It’s the illusion that installing a technology is equivalent to changing an organization.

The literature is ambivalent regarding the impact of electronic record-keeping systems on efficiency: several studies report a decrease in the efficiency of work processes after implementation, while others report improvements. The difference between the two groups is not in the software. It lies in how the change was prepared, managed, and sustained.

Digitizing a bad process only makes it worse, faster.

Digitizing a bad process doesn’t make it good. It makes it bad faster, on a larger scale, and more costly to reverse .

The right question isn’t “what system are we going to implement?”. The right question is “what processes are we going to change, and how will technology support that change?”

How often are we forced to adapt processes to the way technology works, when we should be letting the technology generate efficiency in the designed process!

How many examples are there of wasteful processing, that is, activities without added value that are created by the mandatory actions generated by technology, such as mandatory “clicks” that add nothing to the process, and often delay it?

Technology should follow the process. Never replace it! To reiterate, it’s not the technology that’s the problem, but rather the weak process culture we experience in many healthcare organizations!

In the next article: the power of small automations, and why the most impactful transformations often begin with tasks that no one wanted to question.