I just came back from an executive event where I heard a very interesting talk from the CIO of one of the more successful healthcare systems in the US. I am not sure I can talk about specifics, but that’s not the important part. He said a lot of interesting things in his talk, but one in particular made me both laugh and cringe. Laugh cause it’s something so familiar, and cringe, because it is a problem that should not exist.
Based on recommendations from JAMA they developed an IT framework which monitored a particular condition in their ICU’s, which they had not done in the past (a particular indicator needed to be maintained within a fairly narrow window). By developing some pretty neat protocols, they were able to both decrease costs improve outcomes. Now they wanted to share their processes and protocol, their knowledge as it were, with other healthcare systems. Unfortunately there is no way for them to do that. All systems are different, and there are no good interchange standards. An innovative deployment, which would reduce costs and improve patient outcomes is once again locked up.
When knowledge cannot be shared
Based on recommendations from JAMA they developed an IT framework which monitored a particular condition in their ICU’s, which they had not done in the past (a particular indicator needed to be maintained within a fairly narrow window). By developing some pretty neat protocols, they were able to both decrease costs improve outcomes. Now they wanted to share their processes and protocol, their knowledge as it were, with other healthcare systems. Unfortunately there is no way for them to do that. All systems are different, and there are no good interchange standards. An innovative deployment, which would reduce costs and improve patient outcomes is once again locked up.
Some day we might actually figure this out.
Image via Knilram under a Creative Commons license