Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise<\/a> (IHE).<\/p>\nWe all create silos, often unwittingly or through laziness. We build silos when we communicate through proprietary rather than open standards. A classic (although probably seen as trite by many \u00a0of you) example is the thoughtless proliferation of Microsoft Office Word documents instead of PDF or HTML or ODF or plain text \u00a0[ \u201coh, sorry, I just assumed you use Microsoft Windows\u201d] ; or when we use proprietary channels of communication instead of open ones.<\/p>\n
We do not break down silos by putting doors in them, and then handing out the keys to a few chosen colleagues! At a minimum, we need open doors and windows. That doesn’t mean completely throwing away control. But it does mean gaining and giving a lot more trust.<\/p>\n
The so-called \u201ce-health revolution\u201d is primarily centred around information \u2013 and its better sharing \u00a0– variants of the oft touted \u201cRight information about the right person, to the right person at the right time\u201d. Sure, the goal is better care resulting from that information, but it is the information itself, and its reusability, that is at ( or should be at) the centre of e-health. Without it, and without it in a reliable, consistent, reusable and safe form, there is no e-health, just noise. Information is potential gold. Just witness the insurance companies wishing to get hold of it on the one hand, and the passionate pleas for privacy protection from many consumers on the other.<\/p>\n
Yet so often we pay far too little heed to the nature of this gold. We let sectional interests dictate what information should be collected. For medication management, I’ve witnessed designers of \u00a0data sets preclude the capture of little nuggets such as \u201creason for prescribing\u201d, because they [ one or two pharmacists ] don’t need it. I’ve encountered a senior clinician veto the recording of patients’ blood groups. In recent weeks we have seen the establishment of silos around \u00a0pathology data, prescribing what information should be collected and what terminologies should be used for pathology test orders and results \u2013 satisfying someone’s dreaded, limited set of \u201cuse cases\u201d.<\/p>\n
I’m not trying to single out pharmacists or pathologists for special admonishment. I’m sure similar siloed approaches exist in most quarters. I simply wish to emphasise the point that clinical information is precious, it is the very essence of e-health. Its quantity, quality and reusability is paramount. It’s existence \u00a0transcends the context \u00a0in which it is created. Yet that context needs to be preserved alongside. \u00a0This requires well designed, reusable, clinically safe information containers and patterns.<\/p>\n
Clinical information is for the ultimate benefit of patients and consumers. \u00a0We should continually be on the lookout for ways to maximise the potential of that information – for everyone’s health and wellbeing.<\/p>\n
We need to be far less vertical in our thinking, \u00a0stop erecting those damn silos and maybe then we can start mining the gold!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite recent mention of \u00a0collaboration in e-health agendas, we still seem to be seeing old silos perpetuate or even new silos being erected in Australia. Why is this so? I think it is because we often don’t recognise a silo until we bump into it personally. Even the rush to embrace e-health is \u00a0itself, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[63,62,61],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information","tag-information","tag-medicines","tag-pathology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthbase.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}