The Google purchase of Motorola means everything to the veterinary radiologist. Absolutely everything. Seriously.
Think about it. Does google really want to sell handsets? Does a company whose main value is algorithms really want to get in the murky waters of selling handsets? Does a company whose mantra is “move bits not atoms” really want to play around with potentially cancer inducing squares that people put up to the side of their head? Do they really want to deal with distribution, development, supply chains, and all of the other nonsense that goes along with selling handsets? Of course not.
So why did they do it? The answer is that they had no stinking choice. Even though Google has the potential to build a better operating system than Apple (their main competitor) – that is irrelevant. They know that no matter how great their algorithms, no matter how feature rich or crash proof their operating system, no matter how open their platform, what users want, what they really, really, really want is a seamless user experience.
This type of experience is what the iPhone provides it’s users. Conversely, it is an experience that Google has not been able to provide Android users with the mishmash of hardware platforms that it is had to interface with.
In the future – the company with the best user experience will win. Again, the company with the best platform won't win. The company with the best hardware won't win. Rather the company with the best combination - the best user experience will win. Companies must do what it takes, whatever it takes, to provide that user experience to their users. For Google, that means, for better or worse, they needed to get into the handset game.
This is important to the veterinary radiologist because it does not matter how good your reports are or even how fast your turnaround time is, if you do not deliver your clients a great user experience, you will be sitting on the sidelines. This user experience must include an efficient method of sending and receiving reports, teleradiology integrated into a remote image archive, getting reports into the clinic practice management system, interfacing with laboratory data, and even creating an efficient billing environment. Your golden reports and 10 second turnaround time will get you nowhere without also offering your clients a top notch user experience.
Prediction: In the future, for many clinics the choice of teleradiology provider will center on informatics and user experience as much as the quality of radiology reports or report turnaround time.