Health’s Tower of Babel: Is Technology-Driven Connected Healthcare Wishful Thinking?

All health data, collected by the doctor and the patient, stored as an electronic medical record, interoperable and available when and where it is required. This is the vision for connected healthcare. Technology is slowly linking all the dots in healthcare, but digitalisation cannot automatically merge data silos or create a harmonious data exchange ecosystem.

You cannot connect the dots looking forward, but you can connect them looking backwards,” said Steve Jobs. This is very true in healthcare, where new, technology-based solutions or strategies are often created in a “digital bubble”, without including the components of the healthcare environment, the patients' and the doctors' needs, or the social determinants of care. One of these elements is the specificity of the decision-making process by doctors and the priorities of healthcare systems.

When the Microsoft’s supercomputer Watson won the TV game show “Jeopardy!” in 2011, the audience was impressed, but the defeated champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, felt rather confused. The same is true of doctors interacting with the 'Watson of oncology', but in this case it is not just a game, it is a conflict of competences. 

Read the full article on HIMSS BLOG >