The walls are closing in for healthcare organizations. An aging population, rising rates of chronic illness, workforce shortages, and mounting financial pressures have created a perfect storm. Delivering high-quality, patient-centered care has never been more challenging, yet expectations have never been higher.
Technology should be helping to ease that pressure. It now underpins nearly every aspect of care delivery, from patient monitoring devices to electronic nursing carts and workstations. But when technology is slow or unreliable, it creates friction for staff, adding to stress, inefficiency, and burnout among an already overstretched workforce. So how can healthcare IT leaders navigate this challenge?
The biggest challenges facing healthcare today
The healthcare landscape is testing leaders like never before. Hospital expenses rose by 7.5% in 2025, while staff turnover and burnout continue to impact retention. Like most sectors, the promise of digital tools to improve efficiency and reduce administrative burden has transformed how organizations operate. Electronic health records (EHRs), patient monitoring systems, imaging platforms, and mobile devices that clinicians rely on throughout the day are now fundamental to delivering safe, effective care.
When these systems perform well, they help staff work efficiently and focus on patient care. When they don’t work, the impact can be significant in a healthcare setting. Issues such as slow logins, application crashes and device performance problems can disrupt clinical workflows at critical moments. Every minute spent troubleshooting technology is time taken away from patient care, and even small delays can have significant consequences. Waiting to access a patient’s history, medication record, or test results can delay clinical decisions, extend treatment times and, in the most serious cases, impact patient safety. In an environment already under pressure from staffing shortages and burnout, digital friction adds extra strain for healthcare professionals.
Reliable healthcare technology is also key for unlocking the full potential of AI in healthcare. As providers increasingly pilot and deploy AI tools, addressing current technology challenges will help teams build the foundations needed to scale AI initiatives and support more efficient workflows for frontline staff.
The importance of tech visibility in healthcare
With healthcare teams increasingly reliant on digital tools, organizations need clear visibility into how technology is performing, how it is being used and where it is creating friction. Yet many healthcare IT teams lack this visibility. Issues such as slow application performance or device instability are often only detected after users report them, by which point clinicians may have already spent days or weeks working around the issue. For example, a nursing workstation on wheels with intermittent connectivity may be gradually abandoned before IT teams are aware of the fault.
This is where analyzing the Digital Employee Experience (DEX) becomes essential, helping identify early signs of tech issues and resolving them before they impact care delivery. DEX focuses on how effectively employees can use the digital tools they rely on to do their jobs. In healthcare, that means ensuring clinicians and administrative staff can access patient information quickly, move seamlessly between applications, and complete tasks without technical disruptions.
By continuously monitoring the performance of devices, applications and digital workflows, DEX helps healthcare IT leaders identify and resolve issues proactively, reducing disruption and improving productivity. In a sector where every minute can be a matter of life or death, technology should support clinicians, not slow them down.
The missing link in healthcare transformation
The healthcare system is under sustained pressure, making efficiency and staff well-being key priorities. With technology now central to clinicians’ day-to-day work, improving the DEX can help reduce everyday friction, ease burnout, and improve productivity and organizational performance.
However, this is not a silver bullet. Starting a DEX journey will not solve the wider structural challenges facing healthcare on its own. But it can play an important supporting role – removing unnecessary digital barriers, easing avoidable pressures on clinicians, and giving back time that is too often lost to poor technology experiences.
When hiring more staff is difficult and costly, improving the effectiveness of the existing workforce becomes essential. Better digital experiences help ensure their time is spent on patients and not troubleshooting technology.
By Jordan Rosenblatt, Solutions Consultant at Nexthink
About the author
Jordan works as Solution Consulting Manager at Nexthink. Prior to his role at Nexthink, Jordan worked in IT operations at a variety of large organizations including multiple healthcare providers and manufacturers. He was a founding member of the first Healthcare specific team at Nexthink and continues to work directly with providers on their DEX journeys both as current customers and prospects.