Becker's Hospital Review

72 CIO / HEALTH IT Hospitals aren't making the most of their data — these 4 execs have advice By Katie Adams H ospital executives have vast deposits of data at their fingertips. However, they oen struggle to understand what that data is telling them and how they can derive actionable insights. Below, four executives discuss how hospitals can get the most out of their data. Editor's note: Responses were edited lightly for clarity and style. Michael Restuccia. Senior Vice President and CIO for Corporate Information Ser- vices at Penn Medicine (Philadelphia). Much of the healthcare industry lacks the trust in provided data in order to derive ac- tionable insights from the vast deposits of data. is lack of trust is the result of the com- bination of dirty data (end users not properly entering data), lack of formalized data defini- tions (what is an admission/discharge?) and shortfalls in leadership education to leverage data for decision making (most leaders have been trained to make decisions based upon experience and observation versus data). Gaining the trust of leaders is a tall task, but industry provided data definition standards, small scale successes and hands-on leader- ship training to mine and interrogate the available data are initial steps organizations should consider. Zafar Chaudry, MD. Senior Vice President and CIO at Seattle Children's. Most hospital systems do have access to data (whether pro- cessed or unprocessed) from the entire scope of their business. However, I believe that health systems struggle with leveraging that data to solve strategic problems due to a lack of under- standing by the various stakeholders as to what the data really means, and how it can be used to positively impact changes to service lines. To address this, healthcare delivery organiza- tions should build up their analytics function with people that have the right skill sets (and soware tools) to sit down with the relevant stakeholders, explain what the data really means, show them how the data can be used and leave the stakeholders trained on self-ser- vice tools that can be used to model their data. Ash Goel, MD. Senior Vice President and CIO at Bronson Healthcare (Kalamazoo, Mich.). Data systems in the hospitals are varied and complex. While we have been building up on terabytes of data from EMR's, medical and personal devices, scheduling and billing systems, imaging data to now digital patient interactions, the business driv- ers of investment in actionable insights have not evolved to keep up with the data variety. Most of the current work is centered around gaining financial and operational efficiencies that are driven by narrow, inward focused goals for the various entities. In general, as we have seen so oen, "form follows finance" may be partially responsible for holding data insights hostage as well. A few unique breakout opportunities have been in the space of identifying clinical variation or regulatory reporting which has matured in the last five years. e incremental improve- ment of technology that looks at discrete and unstructured data is also helping across some barriers, but a lot more needs to be done to make the best use of this data repository. Areas of opportunities include investment in shared ecosystems of de-identified datasets, better data governance and exchange stan- dards, refinement of identity management where longitudinal tracking of data is rele- vant (such as patient care journeys), as well as a change in mindset and organizational strategies that include data-informed deci- sion making as a cornerstone of contempo- rary healthcare delivery models. Brendan Watkins. Chief Analytics Officer at Stanford Children's Health (Palo Alto, Calif.). e biggest problem is with the com- plexity of the data. In order to make an im- pact, the insights have to be combined with organizational change strategies. at can be a challenge if the conversations are primari- ly about data wrangling, acquisition or other complexities rather than what to do with the fundamental insights. e art of organizing the data and simplifying the insights is key. n Bots overlooked as main COVID-19 misinformation source, analysis shows By Katie Adams F ake social media accounts controlled by automated software may be the most effective contributors to the rapid proliferation of COVID-19 misinfor- mation, according to research published June 7 in JAMA Internal Medicine. The research team identified Facebook groups that were heavily influenced by bots by measuring how quickly the same links were shared in a sample of 299,925 posts made to groups that shared 251,655 links. When links are repeatedly shared by multiple accounts within seconds of one another, it indicates that the posts are being made by bots. Researchers monitored posts that shared a link to a Danish study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine showing face masks' effectiveness at con- trolling the spread of COVID-19. Thirty-nine percent of all posts sharing the study were made to Facebook groups the researchers determined were most influenced by bots, whereas 9 percent of posts were made to groups deter- mined to be least influenced by bots. Posts sharing the study that were made in groups most influenced by bots were more likely to misrepresent the data and make conspiratorial claims. Twenty percent of posts sharing the study that were made in groups most influenced by bots claimed that mask wearing harmed the wearer. "Bots also appear to be undermining critical public health institutions," Brian Chu, one of the study's authors, said in a news release. "In our case study, bots mischaracterized a prominent publication from a prestigious medical journal to spread misinformation. This suggests that no content is safe from the dangers of weaponized misinformation." n

• Cover