What Healthcare Can Learn from Consumer Tech (and What It Can’t)
Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, MD, PhD, FACEP, FAMIA
It was 4 a.m. on a Friday morning, and I found myself in the emergency department, juggling exhaustion and the relentless demands of patient care. A young woman sat before me, explaining her upper back pain that had persisted for six months. She was otherwise healthy, with no red flags suggesting trauma, infection, or cancer. Her pain seemed tied to her work as a waitress carrying heavy trays — a pattern that improved with rest. Yet here she was, at an ungodly hour, seeking an x-ray for what was clearly a non-emergent issue. Why now? Why the urgency?
This encounter wasn’t just about her back pain; it was a microcosm of a larger issue in healthcare: the disconnect between patient goals and medical processes. It also highlighted the allure — and limitations — of applying consumer tech principles to healthcare. As someone deeply invested in healthcare innovation, I often reflect on how consumer technology’s user-centric design could transform patient care while recognizing the pitfalls of treating healthcare as a simple consumer model.
The Power of Aligning Healthcare with Patient Goals
Consumer technology thrives because it understands its users deeply. Companies like Apple and Netflix don’t just create functional products; they create experiences that appeal to emotions, motivations, and preferences. Healthcare, by contrast, often fixates on clinical needs while neglecting the personal goals that drive patients to seek care in the first place.
Take my own experience with weight loss as an example. If you ask me why I need to lose weight, I might give you the standard answer: “to be healthy.” But health is an abstract and uninspiring concept. What really motivates me? The fact that my wedding band no longer fits after 28 years of marriage is something deeply meaningful to me. If a healthcare professional told me losing weight would let me wear my ring again, I’d be all in.
This principle applies broadly: patients come to us with emotional or social goals disguised as medical concerns. The young woman in my ED wasn’t there for an x-ray; she was there because she feared her back pain might be cancer, a fear likely rooted in her friend’s recent stage 4 uterine cancer diagnosis. Addressing her actual concern required empathy and understanding, not just clinical expertise.
How Healthcare Can Align with Patient Goals
To bridge this gap between medical needs and personal goals, healthcare must adopt strategies that prioritize patient-centered care:
- Ask deeper questions: Go beyond medical symptoms to understand emotional and social drivers.
- Use motivational interviewing: Help patients articulate their goals and connect them to actionable health behaviors.
- Leverage technology: Deploy apps, wearables, and online communities that support patients in tracking progress toward their goals.
- Measure meaningful outcomes: Focus less on provider-centric metrics and more on what truly matters to patients.
For example, imagine a wearable device that doesn’t just monitor blood sugar levels for diabetics but also tracks how dietary changes impact their ability to enjoy family meals or energy for running around with their kids. By aligning health interventions with tangible benefits, we can make care more engaging and effective.
Why Healthcare Is Not a Consumer Model
While consumer tech offers valuable lessons about user-centric design, it also risks oversimplifying healthcare’s complexities. Consumer products are built around choice, convenience, and customization, and the idea that the customer is always right. That to want something (that weird fake fur hat online), is to need something (does anyone really need the weird fake fur hat), and to ensure you have that as effortlessly as possible (one click later and you will have that weird fake fur hat to hide in your closet next to the other box of regret). Healthcare cannot operate under this paradigm because patients often lack the knowledge needed to make informed decisions about their medical needs (not to be confused with their healthcare desires: a critically important distinction).
Consider the growing trend of direct-to-consumer health technologies offering easy access to tests or treatments without provider oversight. While these tools promise autonomy, they often fail to account for risks like unnecessary radiation exposure or misdiagnosis. A patient who requests a CT scan for vague abdominal pain may not realize that other diagnostic methods are safer or that their condition might not require imaging at all.
The Danger of Treating Healthcare as a Cafeteria Menu
Health technologies that mimic consumer models can inadvertently harm patients by:
- Offering convenience at the expense of safety: Over-the-counter genetic tests or imaging services may provide incomplete or misleading information.
- Undermining provider-patient relationships: When patients view providers as mere service facilitators rather than trusted advisors, trust erodes.
- Creating false reassurances: Technologies that promise instant answers often fail to address the nuance and uncertainty inherent in medicine.
Healthcare requires expertise, judgment, and ethical responsibility — qualities that cannot be replaced by algorithms or self-service platforms.
How Healthcare Can Avoid Consumer Model Pitfalls
To ensure technology serves patients without compromising safety or trust:
• Prioritize provider augmentation: Develop tools that enhance clinical decision-making rather than bypassing it.
• Educate patients: Equip them with knowledge about risks and alternatives so they can make informed choices.
• Foster partnerships: Design technologies that strengthen collaboration between patients and providers rather than creating silos.
Imagine if we had technology capable of contextualizing the young woman’s visit beyond her request for an x-ray. Tools that could identify her fear of cancer stemming from her friend’s diagnosis and guide providers in addressing her emotional needs alongside her physical symptoms.
Balancing Technology and Humanity
Healthcare innovation must strike a delicate balance between leveraging technology’s potential and preserving the human connection at its core. Consumer tech teaches us how to align with patient goals but reminds us that healthcare’s unique challenges, complexity, uncertainty, and risk demand professional oversight and accountability.
As I hurried off to see my next critically ill patient after reassuring the young woman about her x-ray results, I couldn’t help but think about what could have been done differently. With more time, or better tools, we could have addressed her underlying fears rather than simply ruling out tumors.
The next time a young woman walks into my ED at 4 a.m., let’s hope we’re ready, not just with X-rays but with answers that matter.
Dr. Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, MD, PhD, FACEP, FAMIA, develops and deploys technology solutions in the healthcare ecosystem as a clinician, business leader, software engineer, statistician, and social justice researcher. As the Vice President of Innovation at Inflect Health and Vituity, his unique formula of skills has helped develop over 35 solutions and scale multiple new healthcare products, including the first AI occult sepsis tool with FDA breakthrough designation. Dr. Tamayo-Sarver oversees corporate venture, internal incubation, and advisory services for AI-driven healthcare solutions, blending consumerism and clinical quality to fit the delicate balance of patient desire, user experience and quality medical care. A Harvard graduate, he holds degrees in biochemistry, epidemiology, and biostatistics, as well as a medical degree from Case Western Reserve University. He is a Mentor in the Emergence Program at Stanford University.
