The Globe and Mail recently profiled a somewhat unorthodox approach, the “hacker way,” to jumpstarting the dinosaur system of Canadian healthcare IT. The “Hacker Way” is a loose model for rapidly solving problems through intense “jam sessions” wherein programmers and developers work on creating solutions in an extended, continuous time period (a weekend, for example).
“[A]bout 180 web designers, software writers and other IT experts will meet about 50 doctors, nurses and researchers to try to produce simple health-care applications that could lead to bigger innovations.”
Any initiative, big or small, in advancing healthcare IT and suggesting easy solutions to long-endured problems should be heartily welcomed.
Healthcare IT is facing a number of burdens. Medicine generates a vast amount of data, with the need for data storage in healthcare doubling around every 18 months. The conversion of medical files to records in digital format theoretically capable of being shared across different health care settings, such as electronic health records (EHRs) and medical records (EMRs), is facing serious roadblock concerns over patient security issues and the requirement of affiliation between organizations. IT infrastructure also has to adhere to a number of stacked industry standards, like HL7, the international healthcare informatics interoperability standards, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which impose limitations on the advancements of cloud computing and mobile applications for the Healthcare sector.
Medical professionals can identify gaps and call for true interoperability within health IT systems, methods of standardization and an alternative to “clunky interfaces, awkward data entry, slow response times, loculation of information, lack of integration or analysis, and identical looking notes” (see Healthcare IT News).
Hacking Health is being organized by an Edmonton medical student, and sponsored by electronic medical records systems supplier Nightingale.