Long-term care is often mocked for being behind the curve in implementing new technology. After last week’s CrowdStrike fiasco, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Truth be told, I don’t understand much about this worldwide tech meltdown. Walking over to the IT department and begging for help is as much as I know about solving IT-related problems. But whatever happened, I know it wasn’t good.
Flights were grounded, banks and hospital systems were knocked offline, and media outlets went dark. Even one of the presidential campaigns had to be completely powered off and rebooted. It was a desperate time.
Long-term care facilities were mostly spared, it appears. Ahhh, the blessings and benefits of being habitual late-adopters.
Maybe it’s just me, but the CrowdStrike debacle comes at a time when technology-related anxiety seems to be rising. Creepy robots that smile and mimic facial expressions will soon be stealing our jobs and running wild in facility hallways. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are poised to write my McKnight’s columns, which assuredly will be an improvement over the Ultra-Natural Non-Intelligence (UNNI) strategies I’ve been using for the past few decades.
And then, against that backdrop of global technology trauma, in an act of breathtakingly poor judgment, I just did the worst thing possible: I bought a new single-serve Keurig coffee maker. And straight out of the box, guess what I’m immediately ordered to do? Connect it to the internet.
With the ghosts of CrowdStrike still on my mind, I read the instructions with horror and fear. Scan a QR code, download an app and create an online account, then connect the brewer to my smartphone and from there to Wi-Fi. But hours later, my finger is still hovering over the big, round blinking K button, as I wonder if all this connectivity is really such a good idea.
I’m frightened to press it, to start that first cup, for fear of inadvertently launching a cascade of misfortune that will cause Delta flights to be canceled worldwide, prison doors to fly open, and the whole internet to explode in a ball of digital flame. I love coffee, but I don’t need it that bad.
At my long-term care place of employment, it seems not a day goes by where I’m not privy to discussions about all manner of newfangled automations, digital tools and AI applications promising to streamline processes, improve outcomes, maximize efficiencies and lead to that most idyllic and elusive of health care utopias — more time for direct patient interaction and care.
But in the aftermath of CrowdStrike, now that we clearly see for the umpteenth time the vulnerabilities of the internet in our interconnected world, it seems that we as a society, and a profession, must do everything possible to establish fail-safe redundancies that prevent this disaster from ever occurring again.
Because we desperately need the internet — 24/7, and without the threat of interruption. After all, without it, how would we ever learn that sharks are on cocaine, watch thousands of writhing rattlesnakes on the Rattlecam or cause a global technology catastrophe from the comfort of my Keurig app?
Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare in Portland, OR.
The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.
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