"Data liberation is the first step towards true collaboration." @Medecision http://t.co/mYqA5C0jX8 #patientoutcomes #HITsm #HealthIT
— PointClear Solutions (@PointClearHIT) April 14, 2014
I generally agree with this idea. It’s really hard to collaborate with someone if you’re not sharing the data about a patient. So, data liberation can be a true enabler for collaboration.
While I think most hospital CIOs will agree with this, I wonder how many act like data liberation is an important strategy for them. Is data liberation really a core value of their hospital organization? My guess is that for most of them it is not.
One major place they can start to make this part of the culture is in the procurement and contracting process. Software vendors are going to happily keep the data as closed as possible unless you require it of them in the contract stage. Once hospital systems make data liberation part of the IT systems procurement process, then we’ll finally be able to see the benefits of data liberation.
The problem we have today is that data liberation and sharing wasn’t part of the previous procurement and contracting process. My guess is that most assumed that being able to share data would be allowed, but few people looked at the fine print and realized what it would mean to them when it came to data sharing. Thus, we’re in a situation where many organizations have contractual issues which make data sharing expensive.
It will take a cycle of new contracts for this to be fixed, but even then it won’t be fixed if you’re organization doesn’t add this to their agenda. Software vendors happily provide the customer what they demand. We need more hospital organizations demanding data liberation.