Vacation reading: Computational Technology for Effective Health Care
While on vacation this week, I was getting caught up on some articles and reports I had found at the The National Academies Press. I was reading an excellent report from the National Research Council entitled "Computational Technology for Effective Health Care: Immediate Steps and Strategic Directions". Even if you are short on time, I would highly recommend reading the Summary alone.
This report identifies some very relevant and addressable issues with HIT, and lays a short-term and long-term vision for how this can be improved by informaticians and system developers (calling specifically to the fields of computer science and biomedical informatics). While those involved with this report are undoubtedly recognized within the field, they also conducted 8 site visits in order to supplement their existing knowledge.
One of the comments that stuck out for me was the need to improve "cognitive support for health care providers and for patients and family caregivers". First, while it is important for clinicians to be effective and well-informed, I'm always glad to see patients included in the discussion as I truly believe well-informed patients are a key to improving health care. In general, there is a wide recognition that a lot of information is available and can be made available, and the challenge is supporting not only the clinicians at the point of care to make sense of it, but also those receiving or supporting care. I believe that this is addressable through existing work done in data visualization, information retrieval and decision support, but seeing this become more widespread is obviously something that's needed. I see this drawing heavily from the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern in software development. There should be the same underlying medical data in the Model, and the View can change based on audience, situation, etc.
An underlying theme (which I am a big fan of) is the discussion of usability of systems - designing systems around a human-centered concept, recognizing that there are exceptions to rules, situations and preferences. The past few AMIA Annual Symposiums have seen an increased recognition in usability and human factors research (or maybe I had just missed it in previous years), which should be applauded and encouraged to grow. Of course, it's critical to place this into practice, and we may as a community need to discover ways to better inform system developers of key findings from healthcare usability research.
I'm always interested to hear what others are thinking on this topic, or other topics on your mind. Please feel free to leave some comments and share.
This report identifies some very relevant and addressable issues with HIT, and lays a short-term and long-term vision for how this can be improved by informaticians and system developers (calling specifically to the fields of computer science and biomedical informatics). While those involved with this report are undoubtedly recognized within the field, they also conducted 8 site visits in order to supplement their existing knowledge.
One of the comments that stuck out for me was the need to improve "cognitive support for health care providers and for patients and family caregivers". First, while it is important for clinicians to be effective and well-informed, I'm always glad to see patients included in the discussion as I truly believe well-informed patients are a key to improving health care. In general, there is a wide recognition that a lot of information is available and can be made available, and the challenge is supporting not only the clinicians at the point of care to make sense of it, but also those receiving or supporting care. I believe that this is addressable through existing work done in data visualization, information retrieval and decision support, but seeing this become more widespread is obviously something that's needed. I see this drawing heavily from the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern in software development. There should be the same underlying medical data in the Model, and the View can change based on audience, situation, etc.
An underlying theme (which I am a big fan of) is the discussion of usability of systems - designing systems around a human-centered concept, recognizing that there are exceptions to rules, situations and preferences. The past few AMIA Annual Symposiums have seen an increased recognition in usability and human factors research (or maybe I had just missed it in previous years), which should be applauded and encouraged to grow. Of course, it's critical to place this into practice, and we may as a community need to discover ways to better inform system developers of key findings from healthcare usability research.
I'm always interested to hear what others are thinking on this topic, or other topics on your mind. Please feel free to leave some comments and share.
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