User Experience tops “trendier trends” like Mobility, IoT, and Benchmarking as the trend with the greatest potential to impact EHS programs for the coming year
TORONTO, ON (January 11, 2017) – Medgate, the global leader in providing enterprise-grade, SaaS-based Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) management solutions has released the results to their 2017 EHS Trends Survey.
Medgate asked EHS professionals in more than 30 countries to share their views on which technology trend had the potential to have the greatest impact on their EHS programs in 2017. Although common trends in the EHS space include the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile functionality and industry benchmarking, the survey shows that the leading trend is simplifying user experience to increase the adoption of EHS software solutions.
While it hasn’t enjoyed the same hype as some of the more avant-garde technology trends, EHS professionals who responded to Medgate’s survey clearly indicated that getting the most out of existing technology had the greatest potential to improve their program’s performance over the next year. The second and third top trends were sharing data across EHS departments enterprise-wide and predictive analytics, respectively.
Larger companies have data sharing hopes
The results show that in larger companies (50,000+ employees) the need to share data across EHS departments enterprise-wide becomes more pronounced, with this taking the top spot for this segment.
Manufacturing looking forward to predictive
For respondents in manufacturing, predictive analytics rises to second place. Many companies are hoping to use big data to accurately forecast where future incidents may occur to implement corrective actions proactively.
Commenting on the results, Medgate Director of Product John Easton, CRSP, said, “All of the technology trends from the survey are important in the coming years, but user experience is key because it makes the difference between a successful software implementation that can provide significant benefits and an expensive white elephant that can drag down an EHS program. At Medgate we constantly review existing workflows to improve user experience and reduce the amount of time customers spend completing tasks.
“In recent years we’ve introduced Medgate Homepage to give users instant access to outstanding tasks, favorite reports, recently viewed items and KPIs. Medgate Swimlane drag and drop workflows are a fantastic visual timesaver with powerful business rules attached in the back end. Medgate Smart Note was designed specifically for user experience – to automate clinician note-taking, and mobile workflows to help simplify how users enter data in the field.”
Results in full
| Average rank | Trend | |||
| 1st | 2.06 | Simplifying user experience to increase adoption of software | ||
| 2nd | 2.49 | Sharing Data across EHS departments enterprise-wide | ||
| 3rd | 2.6 | Predictive analytics | ||
| 4th | 3.44 | Industry benchmarking | ||
| 5th | 3.47 | EHS mobile apps | ||
| 6th | 4.0 | Integration with smart sensors for environmental monitoring | ||
| 7th | 4.94 | Integration with IoT devices like wearables, RFID tags, beacons |
Survey Methodology
Medgate conducted the online survey between December 1st and 11th, 2016. 150 EHS professionals from 30 countries and 12 different industry verticals responded.
