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Some of the world’s leading health informaticians met at the City University in Hong Kong on August 18 and 19, 2017, for the 2017 Context Sensitive Health Informatics conference which is held every two years in advance of MedInfo, which was held in Hangzhou, China, a few days later.
I had the privilege of representing South Florida and presenting a paper on A Quality, Benefit, Cost, and Financial Framework for HIT, E-Prescribing: A Delphi Study which I co-authored with individuals from Harvard University, the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine and the California State University.
The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) describes context sensitive health informatics as healthcare information technologies (HIT) that are now routinely deployed and used in a wide variety of healthcare contexts that differ in terms of workplace, workflows, organizations, habits of work, type and expertise, expectations, preferences of users, physical implementations, patients’ characteristics, time, and workload. The design, implementation, and evaluation of safe, efficient and easy to adopt HIT therefore requires proper consideration of human and organizational factors. That is a ton of language which basically means that HIT needs to be adapted to the local situation.
We learned about many of the challenges of health care in Hong Kong, the embracing of HIT, the similarities and differences to the United States (US), the increasing use of data analytics, and the digital transformation of health care in Hong Kong. The challenges faced by those in Hong Kong were remarkably similar to the U.S. We learned of the increasing use of artificial intelligence in healthcare across the world.
At MedInfo, not surprisingly, the focus again was on data analytics in health care, along with predictive and prescriptive analytics. It was universally thought that such analytics could improve the quality of health care and stem its increasing costs. mHealth, social media, telemedicine, eHealth, and wearable technologies all were thought to be keys in the delivery of healthcare, along with knowledge management, data modeling and health data science in a context sensitive manner.
The world seemed to be moving toward universal healthcare coverage, addressing the social aspects of HIT, increasing use of clinical decision support systems, genomics and precision medicine. There was a significant focus on patient-centered health care, patient-centered applications to promote engagement and activities by patients, informatics tools as facilitators for patient engagement, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), and the future of mobile usability.
Interestingly, the value of data in improving hospital pharmacy and medication safety, and prescription opioid dependence was discussed. Data analytics challenges in precision medicine were discussed, along with predictive analytics in occupational health and safety.
One particularly interesting session was on what will be required to make sure that HIT actually does what it is expected to do.
I had the privilege of interfacing with individuals from over 25 foreign countries, some old friends and others new. An increasing consideration was where do all the healthcare systems around the world obtain the professionals that they need who can critically analyze data and will existing programs be reconfigured. Fortunately, one university is in the process of developing a healthcare practice doctorate degree which is expected to have a data science track which will equip individuals with such skills. Although it will not be in Florida, at least it will be one short flight away.
