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Healthcare IT

The power of connection

5min
Peter Jaret
Published on December 1, 2020

A century ago, the British novelist E.M. Forster distilled his vision of a moral life into two simple words he used as the epigraph for his masterful novel Howards End: “Only connect.”

Sharing healthcare data between care facilities supports improved patient outcomes.

Healthcare today: Gaps, bottlenecks, silos

Interoperability of healthcare data leads to a clearer picture of the individual patient.

Weak transitional care practices between hospitals and SNFs [skilled nursing facilities] compromise quality and safety outcomes for this population.

Health IT Infrastructure, “Hospitals and nursing facilities lack health data sharing infrastructure.”

Even today, data interoperability in healthcare is not a matter of course.

Data is balkanized along organizational boundaries, severely constraining the ability to provide services to patients across a care continuum within one organization or across organizations.

Panch, Mattie, Celi, The 'inconvenient truth' about AI in healthcare.

"Only connect"

Health data management and interoperability are prerequisites to improve patient outcomes and save costs.

Knowing is not enough

By Peter Jaret

Peter Jaret is the author of several health-related books, including In Self-Defense: The Human Immune System, Nurse: A World of Care, and Impact: On the Frontlines of Public Health. A frequent contributor to National Geographic, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Health magazine, More, AARP Bulletin, and dozens of other periodicals, Jaret is the recipient of an American Medical Association award for journalism and two James Beard awards. He lives in Petaluma, California.

  1. References

    Last accessed Nov. 9th, 2020

    [1] Healthcare Dive, “Google Cloud’s head of healthcare on data silos, cybersecurity and APIs in the age of the cloud,” February 20, 2019. https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/google-clouds-head-of-healthcare-on-data-silos-cybersecurity-and-apis-in/548730/

    [2] American Hospital Association, “Sharing Data, Saving Lives,” 2019. https://www.aha.org/system/files/2019-01/Report01_18_19-Sharing-Data-Saving-Lives_FINAL.pdf

    [3] American Journal of Managed Care, DA Cross and JS McCulloch, Jan 7, 2019, Drivers of Health Information Exchange Use During Postacute Care Transitions https://www.ajmc.com/view/drivers-of-health-information-exchange-use-during-postacute-care-transitions

    [4] Health IT Infrastructure, “Hospitals and nursing facilities lack health data sharing infrastructure,” https://hitinfrastructure.com/news/hospitals-nursing-facilities-lack-health-data-sharing-infrastructure

    [5] Healthcare, Thompson, MP, Hospital adoption of interoperability function, 2019 Sep;7(3):100347. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30595558/

    [6] Basu, A et al, JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics, Call for Data Standardization: Lessons Learned and Recommendations in an Imaging Study, 2019 Nov; 3:1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31834820/

    [7] Panch, Mattie, Celi, The “inconvenient truth” about AI in healthcare, NPJ Digital Medicine (Nature Online), Aug 16, 2019 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-019-0155-4

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