How Is Healthcare Like Construction?

At the InfoCommerce Group’s Data Content 2010 conference last week, Per Lofving from McGraw Hill’s construction group, Sweets, described how a literal trailer-full of paper is left behind at the end of big construction projects.  Automated applications exist in construction, but they don’t speak to each other, so printouts are used to deliver information from one party to the next.  My immediate thought was “oh, there’s another industry besides healthcare that is still dead-tree based“. 

Lofving was joined by Mike Collins from Autodesk and they described how they partnered to integrate data from Sweets into Building Information Modeling (BIM) applications offered by Autodesk. Two key points stood out during this presentation:

1. Lofving described how B2B trade publishers have historically been very proprietary with the data they aggregate, even though it could be used to improve workflow in the industry if provided in the appropriate formats. 
2. Collins described Autodesk as a data business.  He said they get categorized as a software business, but in actuality, they should be classified as a data business because the modeling software integrates industry specifications and offers a data-driven workflow solution to builders.

In healthcare, the number of guideline publishers may exceed the number in the construction industry, but the construction case study illustrates how publishers could partner with “software” companies to create workflow solutions for their customers.  Yes, the information they provide may be useful in its current format, but it could be even more valuable to the industry if it were integrated with application software to provide true workflow solutions (e.g., clinical decision support systems).  Also, the health IT vendors need to become more aware of the existing sources of clinical information provided by healthcare publishers that aggregate, index, archive, update, and distribute clinical information.  There remains work to be done in formatting data for delivery to IT applications, but that level of detail can be worked out during partnering negotiations.  The healthcare industry and all of us will be better off when health IT and healthcare publishers create stronger partnerships.