Spending time travelling always hits home where kiosk based reception works and where it doesn’t. Travelling Dunedin > Auckland > Melbourne > Hobart and back again only once did electronic bag drop work without overriding from a human, scanning multiple barcodes. It would be interesting to hear if anywhere had this type of system set up well (in any area) overseas (health or otherwise).
Like most people on this site it’s likely that I have a reasonable degree of tech literacy. I’m also in possession of reasonable eyesight and manual dexterity. This puts me automatically in a better place than most people attending many hospital outpatient departments, before adding in the stress of attending the appointment, or being the person who has got to the front of the queue and is now acutely aware of holding up everyone behind them. The UIs have to be clear, simple, consistent, unambiguous and somehow workable for the vision impaired, while still maintaining privacy (“Thank you for attending the Sexual Health Clinic Dr Brockway”). People get to learn their way around supermarket self-checkouts relatively quickly but they get to practice every week: most people will be unlucky to visit the hospital once a year.
I suspect cost compared to benefit is the issue. The current system works OK maybe 80-90% of the time. The cost of making it work well >99% of the time is huge. The trouble is if you are in the 10-20% where it hasn’t worked and the parking meter is ticking over and the parking wardens are circling /the kids are parked with friends or relatives who have had to take a day off work / the shuttle bus leaves in 15 minutes from the other side of the hospital and the doctor doesn’t even know you have turned up yet, it’s a seriously stressful experience at an unwelcome time. This increases dissatisfaction, increases complaints and mistrust, and can alienate people least in a position to be able to manage.
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