Relevance of Data in Healthcare

Relevance of Data in Healthcare

It has been months since my last post on the need for a bridge between discrete data (think biological data from trackers) and contextual data (think research, guidelines, etc.). In these months, we have come across hundreds more conversations with innovators in the healthcare space, and increasingly more so, with key decision-makers across the entire healthcare delivery spectrum (providers, payers, employers, supply chain officers, CROs...you name it).

Let's talk about the challenges we've come across which we are trying to tackle in all of our earnestness.

Overflow of Healthcare Data.

This is a topic that has pretty much being beaten to death. Just a quick stroll down the isle during this year's HIMSS conference, you'd find it alongside some big poster in just about every third booth, alongside the magic word "Interoperability". For those of you deep in this space, I'm sure many of you were excited to see the acceleration of FHIR's pace in place of existing standards. I'm a firm believer in an open architecture and collaboration. We need that to actually get things done here, one bit at a time.

Yes. Healthcare data is disaggregated. It's easy to "blame" the lack of meaningful, actionable insights on the sheer lack of infrastructure for healthcare data aggregation. However, one should be asking a different question as well. Even with the aggregation of healthcare data, we'd still struggle in determining the data points' relevance to distinct scenarios in the healthcare delivery setting. Think retail. Shoppers. If we can deliver insights in healthcare the same way we deliver useful "nudges" to consumers in a store, I'd say that's pretty good.

It won't be an easy feat. That's an understatement. Privacy concerns aside, after 2 years in Watson and thousands of conversations with KOLs and innovators in the space, we have yet to identify a collaboration strong and encompassing enough to deliver on this promise.

In this day and age, we're getting an App for just about anything you can imagine. It's reasonable. These digital health startups are at least attempting to take these tiny bites out of the inefficiencies in this system. Consider this the "shake-up" phase before eventual consolidation - just like the birth of a new star.

Can Watson play a role? Absolutely yes - but it'll require the help of all those involved. Are you up for the challenge?