Technics: HealthCare Info: Health info always arrives 6-months late, feedback is too slow on the loopback

InfoWeek HealthCare (June1,2k11)

Guerra On Healthcare: 

Improve Your Feedback Loop

We need an accurate and fast data-feedback loop. IT data reports 
that take six months or more to come out don't make the grade. 

by Anthony Guerra InformationWeek 

June 01, 2011 08:00 AM

Two recent reports got me thinking about just how enervating an extended lag between information collection and delivery can be. The first, from the Institute of Medicine, deals with the necessary components of a national digital infrastructure, and is based on workshops held last year.

The problem is that we're already halfway through this year. In the past, that might not have been such a big deal, but with the outside influences that shape your strategic plan shifting with each HIT Policy Committee meeting--and certainly each CMS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking--what people thought a year ago may not be very relevant today.

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The second report, from the Annals of Internal Medicine--in which it reviews the operational status of health information exchanges--is based on information collected in early 2010. Though the authors confess progress could have been achieved since that time, such admissions don't make the data any more relevant today.

The problem with these reports is the aforementioned lag between data collection and consumption. We all need information about the effects of our work to continually improve it. We all need an accurate and fast data-feedback loop. On an industry level, reports that take six months or more to come out don't make the grade.

refWrite editorial comment:


Anthony Guerra's full-length geek-fascinating article, the opening paragraphs of which have been excerpted above to entice you into this strongly recommended reading in matters Technical / Technological, together with the modal science of technics and its place within the modal scale in a stream of Christian philosophy, and its derivative, correlative, and auxilliary disciplines. 8--)

I have been noticing more of HealthCare Technomatics in Guerra's columns in InformationWeek Healthcare,  the column as a whole from week to week, being entitled "Guerra on Healthcare."  He thinks technologically and, of course, digitally, that the IT industry shapes the practice of medical arts and sciences wherever medicine and the latest IT development in healthcare, fuse.  I think maybe that's the reason for so much medical con-fusion.

Guerra seems quite sane to me, but I'll keep you posted as to how he plays out.  8--)

-- InfoWeek / Guerra materials posted by Technowlb