Can We Learn Collecting System Data from How We Collect Medical Device Data?

We’ve been aggregating and sharing medical device data for a really long time in healthcare. Entire corporations are built around collecting and sharing medical device data with another healthcare IT system. If we’ve been able to share this data for so long, could we possibly learn from that experience and apply it to data collection and sharing in other health IT systems?

This is an open question which I hope you’ll join in answering in the comments of the blog. Many readers of this blog are more expert on this topic than I am. So, please chime in and add your thoughts. I think there is a real opportunity for us to learn from the past.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

Motivation – This is the biggest reason that medical device data collection and sharing happened. Organizations saw the value in having this data. I think we’re starting to see a shift in motivation when it comes to collecting system data in a healthcare organization as well. As I wrote about previously, we need data sharing as part of the Health IT procurement process. This will be a slow but important shift for many healthcare organizations. Otherwise you have lethal contracts that put huge financial barriers in the way of sharing data. ACOs and value based reimbursement will continue to motivate organizations to finally want to collect and share system data.

Standards – One of the benefits that device integration had was that there was more of a standard format for sharing the data. This is a lesson for other data system collection. We need a standard. Not a bunch of different flavors of standards, but a standard.

Multiple Standards – Some in the device space might argue that they had their own issues with standards. Every device company had their own standard and you had to integrate with each different device company. This depends on the device, but let’s just assume for a minute that this is indeed the case. How then were these organizations able to collect the medical device data? They just built up interfaces that understood each device’s standard. The key is that each company established a standard for their clinical device and stuck to that standard.

The challenge with other healthcare systems like EHR is that we have so many systems. Plus, even instances of the same EHR don’t follow the same standard. I’m not sure how to remedy this in the current EHR market, but it might be the key to us ever really collecting EHR data. I guess some would argue that market consolidation will help as well.

Connected Tech – One of the biggest challenges in the medical device space was having the technology in the medical device that allowed outside connectivity. Most new medical devices come with connectivity, but in the past you’d have to buy the connectivity separately and store it in a black box under the bed. This is a huge advantage for other healthcare IT software. The data is already connected to the internet.

Those are a few of my thoughts on what we can learn. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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