| | November 20188UTLOOKHealthcare Tech Desire, Data and DoubtBy Daniel Morreale, VP and CIO, Hunterdon HealthcareIt is funny how seemingly incongruous events can converge and bring about aha experience. You know aha experiences. Those funny little brain burps when synapse cascade and create new meaning, solve problems and lead, if we are lucky, to new ideas and solutions. We all have them. Individual that have a lot of them are often called creative. For most of us the events go unnoticed or are shrugged off as a strange feeling, but sometime, just sometime they recompense.Well today I had an aha experience. IT happened in the shower, they always seem to happen in the shower for me, but as I was enjoying the warmth of the water as it chased away the chill of the air a quote from a book I was listening to became connected with an issue about big data.Let me explain. I have a long commute back and forth to work. I drive from southern New Jersey to Central Western New Jersey about 100 miles every day. The trip takes anywhere from two hours to two and a half hours, longer on holiday Fridays. As a result, I started to listen to books, a lot of books. During my more productive hours at work I have been struggling with the need for analytics at my hospital. The constant battering of vendors talking about big data confuses me. I did not seek nor provoke the realm of big data in my health system. I did not expect or invite this new burden of resources on an already overworked staff. But, it is upon me and I am muddled. You see I am under the impression that healthcare does not know big data, at least not yet.I acknowledge big data is really happening. A Japanese engineering corporation has sensors on the wheels of high speed trains that monitor vibration. The sensors take thousands measurements a second which are used to reduce vibration and noise. That's big data. A genomic company in California analyzed over 100 million gene samples to predicatively identify coronary artery disease candidates; that's big Data. What you and I are being asked to do at our hospitals; that's not big data. Yes the magnitude of data being produced is astounding. Exabytes of new data are created every day. But, just because the volume of data is big, does not mean the data is meaningful. Just because operational data is available does not mean the data is useful and just because the wealth of transactional data is at our fingertips does not mean we have the capacity to use it. Healthcare has to differentiate between big data and crucial analytics, and that is where my aha experience clicked. "Desire brings the participants together. Data sets the limits of their dialogue. Doubt frames their questions." Aphorisms from God Emperor of Dune - Frank HerbertThis quote collided with my confusion around big data and IN MY OPINIONDaniel Morreale
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