Medical Big Data: a battle to tear down the hospital data fence

In the era of "cloud computing" and "Big Data", everyone peeps into private "medical data"-the last feast. The health Administration wants to obtain hospital operational data for effective monitoring and evaluation of hospitals; medical it developers want to get rid of vicious competition, from selling "IT manpower" to "selling services" ...

In the era of "cloud computing" and "Big Data", everyone peeps into private "medical data"-the last feast.

The health administration wants access to the hospital's health data, in order to carry out effective supervision and evaluation of hospitals; medical it developers want to get rid of vicious competition, from selling "IT manpower" to "selling services"; Internet service providers have been trying to find hospitals to work together, and have all been turned down, only to swallow End (consumer) to provide very primary consulting, evaluation services ... As for consumers, they never seem to know where their medical data is.

At the end of 2009, there was an article "Information Ecology and national health information sharing", which first introduced the "ecological" perspective. As someone wants to build the ecology of E-commerce, some people want to build the ecology of mobile APP development, as long as there is a large number of interconnected different roles of the system, generally can apply the "ecological" theory. Through the analysis of China's medical information ecological environment, this article found that the "key species" here is the hospital. The core is the hospital shared data "driving force" and "will" problem!

The author analyzes the following reasons:

1. Severe abnormalities in medical service distribution

In the Community Doctor clinical service level is not high today, the idea of a doctor to go to a big hospital can not change the concept of short-term. In some big cities, the annual outpatient service can reach millions of order of magnitude. Hospitals from top to bottom, busy coping with medical disputes, improve hospital bed turnover, the patient as a "client" awareness of the lack. Therefore, most hospitals do not have "CRM" (Customer relationship Management) concept, since even their own discharged patients can not establish daily contact, talk about how to cross hospital data sharing?

2. Multiple Management system

Different hospitals, there are different "in-laws", vertical management system bristling. The big one is the Army series, the local Government series, the University affiliated series, the subordinate series and so on. The Health Administration Department's management to the hospital is much weaker than the bank and other industries.

3. Technology barrier and liability risk

At present, all hospitals have information centers, but the staff strength and the annual information budget is limited. Led to two results: The Information Center only peace, not development, many by hit manufacturers disguised control, some of the hospital's internal data are still in the phase of the Internet can not be shared. Another important reason is that at present, most hospitals are local LAN mode operation, the bottleneck of the internal and external network does not solve the problem between doctors and patients, the data flow between the hospital can not talk about.

4. Environmental issues

Policy lag, such as: test results of mutual recognition, two-way referral, such as the mechanism of normative confirmation, HIT standards, certification and implementation of methods lag behind.

That said, I believe that the hospital's data wall has been pushed down for a while. From the following variables:

1. HIT Manufacturers Shuffle

A few years ago, China did not have a HIT manufacturer with a market share of more than 5%. With the industry competition, mergers and acquisitions listed, will eventually be left with a few big players. Some have moved from Low-cost competition to a model for providing IT outsourcing services to hospitals, and some companies that have monopolistic positions in one region will take the lead in breaking hospital barriers and offering personal services to local governments.

2. Reshuffle of hospital managers

As the CIO or dean of a younger generation of hospitals takes over, the importance of IT is bound to increase. In particular, some new hospitals, the beginning of the network design to support the outside of the hospital access.

3. Data Mining Drive

At present, most hospitals do not have the permanent preservation of data (usually in a few years). These data are of great value in research. Third-party cloud storage of hospital data is an inevitable trend, thus creating conditions for the reuse and flow of data.

4. The rise of private hospitals

The real high-end, high-quality private hospital wave is surging. Their awareness of the patient's service from the initial stage of attention, there is no "hospital data fence" This said, and will become an active participant in data sharing.

5. The movement of Doctors

Although the trial of more than two years of practice in general, but with the growth of young doctors, the increase in the flow of doctors is inevitable. Recently, Concord doctors to Shenzhen office clinics, some doctors through the network accumulation of Word-of-mouth, from public access to private everywhere. At this point, many patients will follow the doctor, further promoting the patient's EMR information sharing needs.

6. Commercial Medical Insurance

At present, the major commercial insurance companies are working hard to study new health and health insurance, combined with high-end health management services, commercial insurance may be the important fulcrum of moving hospitals.

7. The power of the individual

The global "quantify itself" boom has allowed the "personal health cloud" to blossom outside the hospital. The public will gradually increase their voice in obtaining their own electronic medical data after they have gone to the hospital to see the disease. We see that some hospitals have begun to practice providing mobile apps to patients, to facilitate patients from the mobile phone access to laboratory reports and other services. In addition, with the growth of some patients ' community or patient organizations, the individual group's right to speak to the hospital will increase further.

8. Open Source and NGO

In the current stage of complex industrial structure, slow government promotion and individual confusion, some NGO organizations promote the health care industry Open Alliance worthy of attention. Combined with the trend of open source of medical information, this is a bottom-up, with the government to echo the strength of the Top-down!

Medical Big data, is such a look beautiful, but seems to be unreachable beibei. And one of the "key species"-hospitals, in the efforts of all forces, the end has opened the door to the data. By then, all kinds of medical apps can really fall, to provide people with rich and colorful online services.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)