HAVING SPENT decades in search of the next wonder drug, American medicine has starting to think about improving the way care is actually delivered, and has begun to dig deeply into the processes of health care. The science of operational improvement is on the rise. There’s been an explosion of interest in measurement, metrics, and analytics, as researchers try to figure out how best to improve the quality of care.
The pursuit of quality is powerfully enabled by the emerging “digital health” sector, which develops the tools and technologies that enable improved health data collection and sophisticated analysis, and permits us to contemplate the transition of medicine from an episodic, symptom-driven practice to a more holistic vision focused on presymptomatic care and a more continuous assessment of health.
Comments
Just collecting data is an exercise in frustration. To wade through what everyone in the universe thinks should be measured is more "show and tell" than answering important questions about health care. The missing element in most digital approaches is the individual human factor, the ability to ask a relevant question, set up a hypothesis, and then collecting data that will test its validity. In short the scientific method should not be repealed and replaced by Christmas packaging of chaos. Making discoveries although accidental at times usually come because a serious query has been proposed. The progression from hypothesis to theory to scientific fact is what advances our knowledge.