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Healthy Debate

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I love the fresh debate about standards and the evolution of Health IT raised by the three Health Affairs articles.    I agree wholeheartedly with the perspectives of Carol and Clay - and frequently reinforce these comments to customers, policy makers and audiences alike. 

  1. It's about the patient - not about the standards. Value in the form of patient care and business results can be improved by moving/reusing the data already in the system! There is no need to wait for 'standards'.  Ultimately we need to be focused on solutions that provide value to patients….better quality of care.
     
  2. If it's about the patient, we need to empower consumers to be active and engaged participants in the system and they will demand 'connected' care and more health and wellness choices.  They will increasingly make physician choices based on the ability and willingness of physicians to leverage communications/connected care to improve patient convenience and outcomes.  In order to have more choice, consumers need to be able to access and leverage health IT solutions: the same ones that are being used by their physicians and other stakeholders across the spectrum of care.
     
  3. Health IT is a great enabler for many things (outcomes, safety, results, employee productivity, employee satisfaction) but not an end in itself. System design matters a lot - metadata is the answer to enabling exchange of info today to evolve to standard exchange tomorrow.  Health IT is only one piece of the puzzle, but we can't wait for all the pieces to be in place; We need to start improving outcomes today. These beliefs have informed the design principles of the software products we introduced in the marketplace - both HealthVault and Amalga.

In addition to consumers as a change agent, I remain hopeful that the buyers of large health IT systems will wake up and demand more from their vendors; Not in terms of custom features, but in terms of a real commitment to interoperability and to unlocking the data that exists in systems already.   Health IT buyers are critical stakeholders/components of the ecosystem and need to demonstrate leadership in getting us to real solutions that extract the value from HIT - and not let themselves be positioned as victims controlled by the vendors. Unlocking the data that providers and patients need to make the right decisions should be the priority, with the goal of improving patient outcomes.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Aloha Peter, We concur that the "consumer" needs to be engaged. If one views 75 million baby boomers as potential consumers of emerging digital tools which can empower them to age in place and manage their health and caregiving  issues, than we think the adoption rate will be faster than many people anticipate. We'll soon find out in 2009 when we move off the drawing boards into the healthcare ecosystem on Maui. ( see http://www.mauiagewave.com/content/our-connecting-care-map-evolves ). We'll be leaning on your blog to help us!

  • Anonymous
    August 22, 2008
    Peter, The points you make certainly are reflective of what Diamond and Shirky laid out in their Health Affairs paper.  Like you, I whole-heartedly agree with their sentiments and arguments.  To date, much of the HIT efforts at the federal level have been focused on the wrong things. And while I do agree with the premise of your post, let's give consumers what they need to better manage their health, the post seems to gloss over a very real problem today and that is simply getting the consumer engaged in the first place.  Sure, their is a segment of the population that is already there but it is a very small minority.  There is a far larger segment of the populace that needs to "get religion."  As you well know, how we get there from here will be a long road less traveled, but one we both believe is worth taking. But beyond getting the consumer engaged, we must also address the calcified healthcare system with its perverse incentives and vested interests, let alone just getting the medical establishment comfortable with the consumer having some control of their health data.  The more I think abut it the more I believe that it will be on this battlefront that we will face the most significant challenges moving forward.  

  • Anonymous
    September 14, 2008
    "It's about the patient - not about the standards. Value in the form of patient care and business results can be improved by moving/reusing the data already in the system! There is no need to wait for 'standards'.  Ultimately we need to be focused on solutions that provide value to patients….better quality of care." I must disagree on this. It is an old discussion. Standarized storage and messaging of healthcare related data is good for patients. It makes data clear, unambiguous, save. It gives a patient a chance to switch from healthcare provider, using another software solution. There is no need to wait for standards, there are standards in the domain of HL7 and CEN 13606. Why not use them? Imagine following statement was done by a vendor of business-software, it would immediately be clear that standards are an advantage, not a burden to customers (patients) "It's about the customer - not about the standards. Value in the form of customer care and business results can be improved by moving/reusing the data already in the system! There is no need to wait for 'standards'.  Ultimately we need to be focused on solutions that provide value to customers….better quality of business."