There is no Holy Grail, just small chalices

Given the stakes to society and the persistent growth in health care delivery costs throughout the developed nations, there is an understandable desire to achieve the “breakthrough” technological solutions that will result in a substantial disruption in diagnostic and treatment practices and patterns that have evolved over the decades.  Well intentioned and intelligent people with thoughtful ideas are focused on ways to achieve these solutions.  Investors, seeing the large (and growing) percentage of each nation’s GDP that is devoted to health care, likewise hunger for the opportunity to grab even a small portion of that wealth.As I noted in a blog post last year, an area that consumes tremendous energy is the search for the Holy Grail of decision support products that would mine health care “big data.” People are looking for the algorithms that could help doctors—in real time—analyze the condition of patients and put in place more efficient and efficacious diagnostic regimes and treatment modalities. I explained in that blog post why these efforts will fail. Let me summarize:1 -- The data that is collected is not reliable enough to draw connections between patient characteristics, clinical decisions and outcomes.  It is not reliable for two reasons.  First, it is simply not reliable.  Much data that is collected and/or coded in hospitals and physician practices is done so poorly, or in a format that is not clinically accurate.  Sec...
Source: Not running a hospital - Category: Hospital Management Source Type: blogs