by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | April 24, 2015
From the April 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
HCBN: What will the information management look like in 10 years?
PK: From a family doc perspective, I would like us to see a consolidated image of a patient from this mass of data. It will be able to take data and create knowledge. The same will occur on a national and local scale.
HCBN: What initiatives are being worked on at HIMSS right now?
PK: We’ve got a number of initiatives. One for the past couple of years has been our HIMSS Innovation Center in Cleveland with different folks working on IT innovation in a shared space. It really enables people to see the future of health care. It allows vendors and others to test interoperability and IT capabilities all with real-world scenarios.
That interoperability, the secure exchange of patient health information, really is the foundation for improving health. The ONC has their interoperability plan, but the federal government can’t do it alone, so it’s one of our goals to support this process.
Another thing that helps illustrate the value of health information technology, as opposed to just providing studies, is our Health IT Value Suite. It puts stories into “STEPS” – Satisfaction, Treatment or clinical outcomes, Electronic transmission of data, Patient education and prevention, Savings/efficiencies. Each story is told about how health IT helped the outcome — all of those things are plugged into this interactive tool. One can drill down to see how it’s facilitated each of these areas.
Finally, patient engagement has long been a goal of ours. We want to involve patients more in the care process so they are actively involved in their care. It has been shown that activated patients have better health outcomes. We also have started the Personal Connected Health Alliance to facilitate people’s use of health information to improve their lives. It’s in the beginning stages of its work and part of its focus is on data standards needed to allow personal devices to connect to each other.
The transformation of health that needs to evolve from face-to-face fee-for-service, to improving outcomes and managing health is going to call for a paradigm shift. This can’t be done by any one group. All people need to recognize that is the future of care, the future of health. Because of the role health IT plays, to measure and understand what we’re doing and to share it with each other, I think all of us will have a critical role to make sure health IT is part of solution, in order to facilitate this transformation.
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