Yesterday AIIM NE held their fall kickoff event. In a word
WOW.
In many words:
Once again, AIIM NE delivered. We had two guest speakers, Girish
Kumar Navani and David Cochran. I now refer to them as the dynamic duo. Check
out their resumes – their qualifications and experience are most impressive,
and they both delivered excellent presentations.
Although both gentleman hail from the e-medical records/healthcare
vertical, the update they provided on the state-of-the-market concerning
e-medical records was nothing short of a primer on the ECM market in general.
The challenges faced by the health care industry, including compliance and
security, addressing the needs of a diverse community (from patient to
physician), and increased collaboration and transparency, are after all exemplary
of the challenges faced by virtually any organization embracing ECM.
Among the points they made were:
Expectations are rapidly changing. More individuals are coming to
expect access to content electronically, in a collaborative manner, and via
mobile devices. At the same time, protection of content
is paramount.
Under the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the federal government has offered approximately $20
billion in stimulus money to healthcare providers. But to obtain
the stimulus money, health care providers must demonstrate “meaningful use” of
e-content. I immediately glommed onto this term, meaningful use. Whenever involved with ECM
strategy development, I stress the need to look at the impact of the
technology from every angle in order to maximize its impact. I have often talked
about, for example, how an investment in ECM focused on security, can and
should be leveraged as a tool for increased accessibility as well. Although
targeted at e-medical records, the federal government, of all people, has
created a benchmark for ECM implementations.
The American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 defines “meaningful use" as:
· Documented improvement in quality and efficiency (read BPM, workflow and process improvement; demonstration of how the technology impacts business, not simply moves content storage from paper to digital),
· Engaged
interaction with the patient (read going beyond simply capturing content, but
deliberately involving the customer/user, implying content access, transparency
and collaboration)
· Improved Care
coordination (read extended value chain, looking at the practice/process
holistically via systems thinking and collaboration)
· Interoperability
(read technical support for the collaboration targeted, the ability to share
content across a wide community in order to decrease redundancy, ensuring universal
access and readability.)
Sounds like a healthy prescription for any ECM project – does it
not? Indeed, these are the very metrics we at Information Architected use when
developing strategies for our clients – no matter the vertical.
But this was not pie-in-the-sky optimism. Girish and David are realists. They admitted that the road to
meaningful usage is a tough one (like so many ECM practitioners know). They identified
likely challenges including change management, cost and financial viability,
cycle times for success and project management. They stated that it helps to
have a vision of where this change will ultimately lead and to not look at this
as an exercise in IT change management, but fundamentally changing the business,
again by addressing the project system-wide via systems thinking.
Content ownership also received a fair amount of discussion. The
questions was posed, “Who owns the medical record? The patient, the originating
doctor, other medical personnel that obtain it?” There was no simple
answer. The entire group in
attendance, including our speakers, agreed that ownership is a very real
challenge for most organizations. (This reminded me of a similar issue that was
discussed about a year ago at an AIIM NE event at which I was a panelist. The question then was “Who owns the data
captured when a customer transacts business with a commercial establishment?
The customer or the establishment? What privacy should be afforded? Then as
now, we did not come to a definitive and clear answer.)
David stressed the importance of project management, and offered
that within the State of Vermont, the project was managed by breaking it down
into 60+ discrete active initiatives. Excellent advice I have often given to
those embarking on ECM – advice that cannot be reiterated enough.
As for prognosis: Girish and David postulated that the information
revolution instigated by the advent of the internet will prove to be the
fastest revolution of all time, dwarfing the rate of the industrial revolution.
Girish felt that within 5 years, 80-90% of the health records in the state of
MA would be completely e-based.
One reason for the positive prognosis, in my opinion, the government
and healthcare industry are leveraging a Knowledge Management best practice,
namely providing incentivization to encourage participation and acceptance to
change. (Under the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009, participants can obtain significant financial
reward as part of the stimulus package, but only if they achieve
meaningful use.)
The room was energized by this dynamic duo, who provided a most
healthy outlook for ECM. At the conclusion I thanked them as an ECMer- for their
positive outlook and insight placed on ECM, and secondly as a citizen of the US
– for providing us with great hope that our health care is going to be enhanced –
with a little help from ECM.
There was a certain amount of pride and excitement in knowing that
ECM was fundamental to these positive changes in the health care industry.
ECM ROCKS.
