The last major shift in time tracking came in the 1950s when the American Bar Association introduced the timesheet. In many complex environments, especially healthcare, not much has changed since. Organizations still struggle to measure time in ways that are accurate, meaningful, and minimally disruptive to the people actually doing the work. That challenge is what led me to start Time Study (timestudy.com). What began as a small project has grown into a platform trusted by over 100 hospitals and a company focused on turning workforce data into insight, not just oversight.

Last week, I had the opportunity to represent Time Study at the HearstLab 2025 Showcase on the Healthcare & Employee Workforce Innovation panel. The session was moderated by Barin Rovzar of Hearst Health and featured Lindsey Klein from QGenda, Jen Henderson from TilT, and me. It was a meaningful conversation about how workforce data can support everything from financial accountability and compliance to better staffing decisions and improved clinical workflows.

We also acknowledged the reality that capturing this data is complex. Intentions vary, systems are often fragmented, and the burden of data capture typically falls on an already overstretched workforce. We discussed how automation and AI can help simplify and support the work that matters most—without replacing it.

The discussion kicked off with a big question: What makes understanding how healthcare workers spend their time so important? 

Here’s a quick recap of what we explored.

HearstLab 2025 Showcase

The Challenges

1. Workers are more time-strapped than ever. In healthcare, even seemingly small increases in administrative time can have a ripple effect. In many hospitals, we’re asking already overwhelmed teams to rely on manual procedures, recall-based activities, subjective inputs, and spreadsheets to capture complex work. Each new requirement, no matter how well-intentioned, has the potential to pull time away from patient care. It’s now widely accepted that physicians spend just 30 to 40 percent of their time with patients. As someone building tools for this space, I believe the impact of a solution is not only measured by what it can do, but also by how well it can integrate into an already burdened system.
2. In complex, high-stakes environments, there is a constant negotiation between financial accountability, regulatory compliance, work outcomes, and workforce effectiveness. Precision in how this data is captured and reported carries serious financial consequences. Real-world care delivery is complex, especially in high-acuity areas like transplant. Clinical workflows often span departments, specialties, teams, and physical locations. To meet financial and regulatory requirements, time data must be collected with accuracy and consistency. Through our work with healthcare finance and compliance partners, we know that health systems can lose the ability to claim hundreds of millions of dollars in physician labor costs due to time defensibility issues.
3. ROI is narrowly focused on financial impact. There’s an unintended consequence to ROI that doesn’t consider both financial outcomes AND the experience of the workforce. A high return that overlooks workforce impact can lead to long-term consequences such as burnout and retention challenges. Time data can do more than satisfy regulatory requirements. It can equip leaders to make informed staffing decisions, reduce administrative burden, enable regulatory and financial compliance.

My predictions for the future of healthcare innovation:

• There is no shortage of data. What we need are context-aware insights that drive action.
• Leading organizations will invest in DataOps and AI-ready pipelines to make their data more usable and impactful.
• We need more sandboxes and safe spaces for testing and exploring new ideas without disrupting operations.
• Breaking down silos will unlock better, more connected solutions across the system.

These insights reflect both the real-world challenges and the opportunities that come with building solutions in complex environments like healthcare. As innovators, our goal remains the same: to create technology that serves people, not the other way around.