Healthcare : Data and Governance

It was one of those typical monsoon days with overcast grey skies, and continuous downpour of rain accentuated the lethargy that lockdown had imposed due to the pandemic right through summer. Fortunately, we as a family unanimously agreed to watch something that we all enjoy, reruns of the 90’s sitcom ‘Seinfeld’ – we randomly tuned into to an episode where Elaine learns that she is labelled as being a ‘difficult’ patient. She goes to another doctor for treatment but her tag of being a ‘difficult’ patient arrives everywhere before she shows up at any doctor’s office… the episode continues to be a great comedy that gave us a good laugh!

Fast forward twenty-five years, imagine if there was such an attribute captured for any medical patient and was shared across hospitals, what could happen? What could happen if patient medical history and treatment is freely shared? Unfortunately, there is a fair bit left for our imagination for the most part. In an age when something as mundane and useless as ‘what celebrity X had for breakfast today’ makes headlines and spreads from a corner of the globe to another, thanks to internet and great connectivity, we still do not have critical and crucial information made easily available and accessible across hospitals, clinics.

It’s a feeling that healthcare business, hospitals, clinics, labs are protective and somewhat closed about sharing information pertaining to patients especially amongst their fraternity. The healthcare industry and business in general still has dependence on paper while alternate electronic means have been available for years ; do the hospitals, clinics, labs really need as many paper documents and files?

It seems a bit odd that that acceptance of ‘digitization’ is much slower in healthcare industry, where ‘data’ has always been the basis of ‘healthcare’. From height, weight, heart beat measurements of a new born to vaccination records and the rest that follows till eternity, there is ‘data’ and ‘measurements’ at every stage. Clearly there is no shortage of data, on the contrary there is abundant data!

Against the backdrop of pandemic (COVID) where there are multiple ‘opinions’, ‘reports’, ‘discoveries; etc. pouring in, there is no shortage of data leading up to confusion, yet there is lot of room for improvement to get meaningful information.

Could this spread of data and information be managed better? What sort of ‘Governance’ could help? Thoughts and responses welcome.

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