Beyond Better Data: We Have More Healthcare Data Than Ever. So Why Isn’t Healthcare Getting Better?
By Shawn M. Murphy, Executive Director, Thought Leadership & Innovation Foundation
I spend a great deal of my time thinking about healthcare data.
At TLI, we work with organizations that collect it, analyze it, build technology around it, and—most importantly—try to use it to improve the lives of patients and communities.
And something has become increasingly clear to me:
Healthcare doesn't have a data problem. We have a data-to-action problem.
We have more healthcare information available to us today than at any other point in history.
Electronic health records. Registries. Claims data. Clinical research. Patient-reported outcomes. Remote monitoring. Artificial intelligence. Predictive analytics. Dashboards that can tell us what happened yesterday and, increasingly, what might happen tomorrow.
We have invested enormous amounts of time, money, and expertise in making healthcare more measurable and more connected.
Yet the question I keep coming back to is much simpler:
What actually changes because we have all this information?
That question is at the heart of TLI's new Beyond Better Data Conversation, inspired by Bill Oldham's book, Beyond Better Data: What Actually Changes Healthcare?
And I think it is a conversation healthcare needs to have.
Data is not the same as impact
One of the challenges I see across healthcare is that we sometimes confuse the availability of information with the impact of information.
We can collect the data.
We can store it.
We can visualize it.
We can analyze it.
We can build an algorithm around it.
But none of those things, by themselves, necessarily change what happens to a patient.
I've come to think about the journey this way:
Data → Information → Insight → Decision → Action → Outcome
We have become very good at the first several steps.
The harder work begins when we ask:
What happens next?
Does someone make a different decision?
Does a clinician change what they do?
Does a healthcare organization change a process?
Does a patient receive different care?
Does a researcher pursue a different question?
Does a health system allocate resources differently?
And ultimately:
Does the patient's experience or outcome improve?
If the answer is no, then we have to ask whether the information actually created value.
The last mile may be the most important mile
I've worked with many people who are exceptionally good at generating, managing, and interpreting healthcare information.
But I've also seen how difficult it can be to move from an insight on a screen to a change in the real world.
Think about what goes into creating a healthcare dashboard.
Someone determines what should be measured.
Someone identifies the data sources.
Someone builds the infrastructure.
Someone cleans and validates the data.
Someone develops the analytics.
Someone designs the dashboard.
Someone presents the findings.
And eventually, someone looks at the number.
But then what?
Who is responsible for acting on it?
What exactly should they do differently?
When should they do it?
How will we know whether that action made a difference?
Those aren't secondary questions.
They are the point of the exercise.
This becomes even more important with AI
Artificial intelligence has enormous potential to change healthcare.
It can help us identify patterns, synthesize information, predict risk, support clinical decisions, and make enormous amounts of information more accessible.
But AI doesn't eliminate the gap between information and action.
In some cases, it may make that gap even more apparent.
A highly accurate prediction doesn't improve a patient's outcome if nobody acts on it.
A sophisticated clinical decision-support tool doesn't improve care if it doesn't fit into the clinician's workflow.
A predictive model doesn't create value simply because its accuracy improves.
And a dashboard doesn't change healthcare because it looks impressive.
The technology is only part of the equation.
The real question is what people and organizations do with what the technology tells them.
What I believe healthcare needs to ask next
At TLI, our mission is to bring together leaders, organizations, and communities to design and advance innovative, scalable solutions that create measurable impact on the health and well-being of patient communities.
That last part matters to me:
measurable impact.
Not simply more technology.
Not simply more information.
Not simply more activity.
Impact.
That means we need to ask different questions.
Instead of asking only:
How much data do we have?
We should ask:
What does the data tell us?
Then:
Did it change a decision?
Did the decision change an action?
Did the action change an outcome?
And perhaps the most important question:
Did it make a meaningful difference in someone's life?
This is the conversation I want TLI to help advance
The Beyond Better Data Conversation isn't going to be about data alone.
Over the coming weeks, we'll explore the intersection of data, technology, leadership, clinical practice, artificial intelligence, innovation, and patient outcomes.
We'll hear different perspectives.
We'll ask difficult questions.
And we'll look at what it takes to move healthcare from simply knowing more to doing better.
Because I don't believe the future of healthcare will be defined simply by how much information we can collect.
I believe the more important question is:
What will we do with it?
That's where healthcare's next transformation begins.
What is the most important thing your organization knows—but isn't consistently acting on?
I'd love to hear your perspective.
The Beyond Better Data Conversation is a TLI thought-leadership series inspired by Beyond Better Data: What Actually Changes Healthcare? by TLI Chairman and President Bill Oldham.