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Category: Data Quality

Care Plans, Goals, Actions and Outcomes: The Future Health Record

Care Plans, Goals, Actions and Outcomes: The Future Health Record

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It has been a while since I last wrote, having been busy with consulting work, keynote speaking and a family holiday in Europe. As I have been reflecting on new topics to write about, I have realised that there are a number of exciting ideas that need some air time, as I have rarely seen them discussed in association with digital health.  I’ve decided to pull these together into a series of blog posts entitled “The Future of Healthcare”.  I…

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Quality And Safety Not Efficiency: Why We’ve Been Selling The Wrong Message on EMRs

Quality And Safety Not Efficiency: Why We’ve Been Selling The Wrong Message on EMRs

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… hospitals accidentally harm a lot of people, and much of this could be prevented using clinical decision support to assist in providing safety checking and the application of the latest medical knowledge at the point of care.  In that context, a more appropriate message to be sold in EMR business cases would be “EMRs – more work, to deliver improved safety to patients”*.   In recent weeks I’ve been working with a number of health organisations who have implemented…

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Why Paying Health Providers for Improved Data Quality Won’t Work

Why Paying Health Providers for Improved Data Quality Won’t Work

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What if we began to educate health providers, and the public, that health providers that capture high quality data are actually delivering the best quality care?  What if we helped people to understand that clinical documentation and the capture of high quality data is a clinical task, not an administrative task?  What if doctors in hospitals stopped delegating completion of the medical record to the most junior clinician in the room, and began to take pride in recording clinical information…

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Why Digital Health Needs Standards And Health Informatics More Than Ever

Why Digital Health Needs Standards And Health Informatics More Than Ever

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 As we deal with the inevitable rise in the number of locations in which our health information is stored, we must redouble our efforts in the fields of health informatics and standards.  It is only via these foundations that we will be able to share health information within and across organisational boundaries, confident that we have a common view of meaning (to the extent that is possible) that does everything to minimise the risks of harm caused by misunderstood or…

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Separating The Signal From The Noise – Finding Clinical Relevance In Consumer Health Data

Separating The Signal From The Noise – Finding Clinical Relevance In Consumer Health Data

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In it’s unadulterated form, consumer health data is 99+% noise.  If we present it to health providers in this form, we’re going to very quickly turn them off the idea of gathering data from patients and caregivers.  Any who could blame them?  If Digital Health is going to add value to busy health providers, we need to separate the signal from the noise for them.   In the rush to gather vast amounts of data from consumer health devices and…

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The Dimensions of Clinical Data Quality

The Dimensions of Clinical Data Quality

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As we move into the next phase of EMR / EHR maturity, these systems will increasingly shine a light on problems with a) the quality of data captured by health providers and b) the quality of care delivered.  Without a mechanism for measurement of clinical data quality we can’t start this conversation that we need to have.   Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my views and focus on the role of data quality in the emerging…

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Open Your EMR To Patients – Let Patients Help

Open Your EMR To Patients – Let Patients Help

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… I now believe that the only way to significantly improve clinical data quality is by opening up EMRs and Clinical Information Systems to patients and caregivers, allowing them to read all that is written about them, and to flag incorrect data.  In addition to the transparency of knowing what is being written about them, patients and their caregivers are a vital line of defence in protecting against medical errors that arise from poor quality data.   As I work with…

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FHIR and the Real Challenge of Health Data Interoperability

FHIR and the Real Challenge of Health Data Interoperability

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… I think the hype risks misunderstanding the problem that we’re solving here.  Ultimately we’re not just sharing healthcare information between computers, but between people.  We must be able to share data between people and organisations, and be confident that we know what others meant when they captured or authored that data.   I spent the week before last at the HL7 International Working Group Meeting in Baltimore.  It’s an exciting time in the life of HL7, the international health standards…

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Without Improved Data Quality Our Health Systems Will Fail

Without Improved Data Quality Our Health Systems Will Fail

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The act of gathering large amounts of aggregated medical record data into one place creates a transparency that we haven’t had before.  It represents the next step in a maturity journey, allowing us to shine a light on some of the real root causes of systemic quality and safety issues in our health systems.  The fact that we are reaching this maturity stage should be welcomed   With the explosion in medical knowledge that I’ve talked about in previous posts, it…

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Elevating the Role of Patient-Curated Med Lists in Meds Rec Processes

Elevating the Role of Patient-Curated Med Lists in Meds Rec Processes

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… based on data that I have recently been studying, patient-curated medication lists are more likely to be accurate than clinically-curated medication lists.   In my experience, the majority of clinicians don’t have a lot of respect for patient-curated medication lists.  I believe that a growing evidence base shows that this view is unfounded, and I want to explain why. First let me say that I understand that many (perhaps most) patients aren’t interested in or don’t need to keep their…

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