According to Charlie Harp, CEO of Clinical Architecture, even if we solve the interoperability challenge in healthcare, we will still have to work to refine the data to make it useful. The quality of that data needs to be improved and the resolution of the picture it paints of a patient needs to increase. The latter is a hidden challenge that healthcare organizations are not paying enough attention to.
Healthcare IT Today sat down with Charlie Harp at HIMSS23 to unpack healthcare’s data resolution challenge.
Data Resolution
“The picture of a patient that we can create with the data we have today is low resolution,” explained Harp. “You can think of it like a crayon drawing of a patient. When we hand off that picture to an AI engine or any other software, the best it can do is give us answers based on that low-resolution picture.”
This is not ideal.
Harp believes that we need to “dial-up” the resolution on the healthcare data we collect so that we can build 4K pictures of patients. Feeding high-resolution and high-quality data into AI, analytics or other software will result in output that is more tuned to the particular patient.
Consider the example of a patient who sees their family physician about chronic nosebleeds. In the visit notes, the physician records that the nosebleeds last for approximately two hours each time and happen about two weeks apart. However, when that visit is coded, it may only be designated as a “nosebleed”. What started as high-resolution data in the notes, is turned into low-resolution data during coding.
Improving Data Resolution
Improving data resolution is an important part of improving overall data quality, but it does not get enough attention because it is not obvious by looking at the data that it is low-resolution. It takes careful analysis and expert observation to see the data resolution gap.
“I think when we get to the point where we have more interoperability and dial up the quality of what we are transacting today, I think what we [healthcare organizations] are going to realize is that there is still a lack of resolution,” said Harp. “I think we can overcome this challenge. We are making progress.”
Watch the interview with Charlie Harp.
Learn more about Clinical Architecture at https://clinicalarchitecture.com/
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