By Laura Young, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Converge Health
LinkedIn: Laura Young
LinkedIn: Converge Health
It is one of the most common complaints in healthcare circles. If I can wire money across the globe with my phone or book a flight from my couch, why can’t my doctor instantly see my records from across town?
The comparison is tempting. Banking and travel feel lightyears ahead in convenience. But healthcare is not “behind” in the same way. It is simply different. Comparing your medical history to your checking account balance is like comparing a backpacking trip through the Andes to your morning commute. They both involve moving from point A to point B, but one is a whole lot trickier and more dangerous.
Health Is a Moving Target
Your bank balance today probably looks about the same as yesterday, unless you went wild on Amazon at 2 a.m. Your frequent flyer number? Permanent. Once United Airlines gives you that eight-digit code, it is yours forever.
Your health? Not so steady. Medications change. Diagnoses appear, evolve, or get resolved. Lab results shift like sand dunes. Trying to pin down your health record is like trying to catch fireflies on a summer night. Just when you think you have it in a jar, another one lights up somewhere else.
And yes, sometimes people do wake up to a mysterious bump in their bank balance—but that’s usually a mistake, not a miracle. The bank will fix it before you can buy that beach house. Your cholesterol, on the other hand, doesn’t come with a customer service hotline.
Standards: The Highways of Data
To be fair, healthcare does share some DNA with banking and travel. They all rely on standards.
Banking runs on global protocols like SWIFT codes. Travel uses IATA standards to keep airlines, airports, and ticketing systems in sync. Without those, you could not board your connecting flight in Frankfurt with a ticket you bought in Phoenix.
Healthcare has its own set: HL7’s FHIR, DirectTrust protocols, TEFCA. These are the highways that connect EHRs, labs, pharmacies, and even social care systems. Without them, we would all still be faxing like it’s 1995 (and to be fair, it’s still 1995 in some areas of healthcare!)
But here is the difference. In banking and travel, once the highways are in place, the job is mostly done. In healthcare, the real challenge comes at the very end of the journey. Welcome to the last mile.
The Last Mile: Where the Hard Stuff Lives
The last mile in healthcare is not just about moving data from one place to another. It is the space where all the unsolved use cases live.
Why unsolved? Because they are messy, expensive, and sometimes misunderstood. Because funding has often skipped over them. Because they do not fit neatly into the way platforms were originally built. And because they require thorny changes like adding opt-in consent to systems that were designed for opt-out sharing.
The last mile is behavioral health and substance use data that runs headlong into 42 CFR Part 2 restrictions. It is social care data about housing, food, and transportation that never quite fits into a medical chart. It is justice-involved health data that lives in siloed corrections systems with their own rules. It is crisis care coordination that demands real-time alerts instead of monthly spreadsheets.
These are not just gaps in plumbing. They are whole neighborhoods left unlit because the wiring is complex, the contractors are broke, and the homeowners never agreed on where the outlets should go.
Guided Tours, Not DIY Trips
Banking and travel are do-it-yourself adventures. You do not need a banker hovering over you to pay your bills. You do not need a travel agent to book your spring break trip (unless you like paying extra).
Healthcare is not a DIY activity.
Medical data does not arrive with a Rosetta Stone. Lab results look like alphabet soup. Treatment plans read like choose-your-own-adventure stories where every ending is stressful. Most people cannot decide what is relevant to share and what is not, and they should not be expected to.
That is why healthcare comes with navigators. Doctors, nurses, case managers, and community health workers act like tour guides. A travel agent just books a flight. A tour guide walks beside you, points out what matters, and reroutes when there is a detour.
Patients may sit at the center of their care, but asking them to carry all the data and decide what matters is like asking tourists to plan the entire group trip, translate the street signs, and keep everyone on schedule. At best, someone misses a landmark. At worst, the trip falls apart.
The Group Expedition Analogy
If banking is a solo errand and travel is a semi-guided journey, healthcare is more like a group expedition. Picture trekking through the Himalayas.
You have Sherpas (navigators), maps (standards), and a supply chain (data systems). The weather changes (new diagnosis). Someone develops altitude sickness (complication). You need a rescue plan (emergency care). The success of the expedition depends on the whole team, not just one climber racing ahead.
And the last mile? That is summiting the peak. It is not enough to have the right gear and the right maps. Everyone has to make it to the top safely.
Why the Last Mile Matters
It is easy to point at banking or travel as models of seamless data exchange. But those comparisons miss the point. Healthcare’s challenge is not that it lacks highways. It is that its most important destinations sit at the very edge of the network.
The last mile is where whole person care happens. It is where lab values intersect with social needs. It is where a discharge alert should reach the community provider. It is where a medication change should trigger a case manager’s involvement.
These problems are not solved with better pipes alone. They require governance, funding, new workflows, and sometimes an overhaul of the platform itself. They also require trust. After all, no one casually clicks “share” when the data involves addiction treatment, mental health notes, or whether someone has food in the fridge.
Wrapping It Up
So the next time someone asks, “Why can’t healthcare be like booking a flight?” here is the answer. Flights do not care if you have housing. Banking apps do not ask about your depression screening. No one needs a case manager to move fifty dollars from savings to checking.
Healthcare is harder. And that is okay. Because unlike banking or travel, the goal is not just to move information. It is to move people toward better health. Whole person health.
That journey will always need more than an app. It needs standards, guides, and most of all a commitment to solving the last mile — the toughest, most important use cases that stand between today’s systems and tomorrow’s care.
This article was originally published on Converge Health and is republished here with permission.