Changing the Healthcare Story

“The world view is a narrative - it’s a narrative we got from our parents, our teachers, our employers and our culture, and to change that narrative with good data and good statistics takes more than numbers. But it can’t be done without the good numbers.”[1]Hans Rosling, Director, Gapminder Foundation.

Last week, I attended Patient-Centered IT ‘10 produced by the health and wellness team of Capstone Partners, an investment bank that serves middle market companies.  The quality of speakers and the interesting mix of health IT and health content start-ups combined to make it one of the better healthcare conferences I’ve attended in a while.

Among the highlights:

Jim Champy-of Reenginering the Corporation fame–opened the meeting with a preview of his new book, Reengineering Health Care, co-authored by Harry Greenspun, MD, CMO of Dell. Available in June, it is targeted to clinicians and exhorts them to take a stronger role in calling for improvements in our healthcare delivery system.   In Champy’s words, we “need proof to convince clinicians” of the benefits of changing and automating processes in healthcare provider institutions. 

Toward of the end of his talk, Champy expressed surprise that more consumers are not clamoring for change in our healthcare delivery system.   Why aren’t they?  I think it’s because they don’t have enough information about the often dangerous flaws in our current system or enough knowledge of how much better the system could be with improvements that are eminently doable with existing information sources and IT resources. 

Another speaker, Katrina Firlik, MD, CMO of HealthPrize, brought up the point that “data can drive better behavior“.    Her company uses techniques from human behavior studies to create engaging programs to improve patient adherence to prescription drug treatments.   

Both speakers emphasized the role of “evidence-based narratives” in changing human behavior.  We are producing and collecting increasing amounts of health-related data, and we’re making good progress in introducing standards and improving the interoperability between currently fragmented data sets, though the need for aggregators and consolidators will remain strong for the foreseeable future.

What is needed are compelling stories based on the data-stories that link back to the source data and exhibit a solid understanding of it. But Rosling warns that misrepresentations will be rampant as access to data becomes more open.  I recommend watching Rosling’s presentation that is referenced below–especially the first 20 minutes–for an entertaining and inspiring view of the power of data to change the healthcare story.

[1] Hans Rosling from the Gapminder Foundation in a presentation at World Bank, May 24, 2010.  Rosling uses examples from public health, but his descriptions of building narrative from data bases, especially using graphics, equally applies to other situations.