I talk a lot about this flexibility gap in my day job in UX. Getting an organization onto a digital platform is great but a lot of them don’t recognize all the small ways that their current system’s flexibility is helping them.

With big systems though I honestly think GUIs can only go so far, even at their very best, and any system that is required to be complex at some level will require expert knowledge of the system itself. That’s extra work and an extra burden for someone with the critical experience that an organization relies on.

For doctors and the like it would make sense to try a system where the critical person/expert has an assistant who is a systems expert and does a lot of the needed data entry and the like. Doctor doesn’t have to worry about the system, they can talk to the assistant who manages all the extra work. If the system needs to change for any reason the assistant manages that and the doctor doesn’t have to worry about it.

I think of this assistant role as the human API layer. It’s not far off from some social programs like insurance navigators, who help individuals find health insurance, including working through options and even—critically—filling out forms for folks.

ETA: It’s a thing! I didn’t know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_scribe