John R. Zaleski, PhD, CPHIMS

“We are increasingly skeptical of terms like “crowd sourcing”, “social”, “big data”, or “mobile” as cover for a product that has only a website placeholder and a hypomanic founder.  A mature dialogue means admitting that fixing health care isn’t easy, and that the current system while broken is not made up of fools who despise novelty.”

- Rebecca Coelius

This is from an article on KevinMD titled “A guide for entrepreneurs to get a doctor’s attention”. I have been thinking about this article for about a week now and it is right where my brain is at based upon the interactions I have been having with various physicians from institutions across the country. Don’t get me wrong, the concept and vision of “Big Data”  – data that are too big for conventional processing in localized databases and analytics engines, and which, if mined appropriately, can result in enormous value for the end user — is really not a new concept.

No, it is not.

For example, I can describe from personal experience one project in the late ’90s on data warehousing related to healthcare that was rather similar. I am sure other “veterans” can describe similar experiences. I think the technologies were a tad more crude then; we did not have the iPhone, iPad, Android and numerous other novel “information appliances” (with apologies to Donald Norman), but the concept of gleaning intelligence from large quantities of data has been around for a long, long time.

But the main point of the article is for entrepreneurs to focus in on the right areas. Many years ago I once had a mentor tell me that it is a wrong conclusion to state that when provided with more information the uncertainty in the target declines. I treated that as an axiom for a long time. Yet, my beliefs have changed on this front. When presented with too much of the WRONG information, or CONFLICTING information, uncertainty does indeed increase, as well as confusion. This extends to my beliefs about “big data“. Having more information is only useful when it is properly vetted with the right stakeholders. This does not mean that all stakeholders are correct, merely that ideas can be reduced to gimmickry if not properly focused. The KevinMD article illustrates this rather directly. Working with clinical end users to align on what is most important to improving the relationship and understanding of the problems they face is the best way to achieve acceptance and closure on a specific technology. To exclude the clinical end user or minimize the challenges they face, whatever they may be, is to risk existence and acceptance of a technology.

The above statement is certainly not “rocket science.” Yet, it is oftentimes overlooked that if you are targeting a technology towards a specific individual or to solve a specific problem, it may be better to participate in the circles of those who are treating patients rather than the larger IT forums that are more flashy.