Health care

Healthcare

Effective IT for healthcare needs to make use of many sources of (distributed) information. The myriad of systems do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, each system is influenced by neighbouring systems. Data is distributed, frequently crossing organisational borders. Every aspect of medical practice, research and policy ideally needs to make optimal use of (and in most cases create supplementary) information to deliver the best possible healthcare services to patients. This include data at different 'speeds' and with differing levels of openness. Data from patient monitoring equipment is fast. Conversely, however, a patient record is neither slow nor fast. Data for which authorisation is required and where patient privacy must be preserved is closed. Highly refined medical knowledge is slow and seldom updated.

Patient heath records are an important beneficiary of this uniform approach to data, integrating (by reference) the distributed data items relating to the patient, data streamed from a body sensor, other medical episodes, genetic conditions, etc. Similarly, a medical professional requires a different 'view' through the data schedule, perhaps according to their speciality. The objective is a data infrastructure from which each type of stakeholder can build smart healthcare applications.