Neil says..
Peer-to-peer healthcare
One thing we'd like to do with Radiology Manager is use it as a vehicle to articulate why peer-to-peer is significant for healthcare. It basically revolves around various key concepts:
- the team
- real-time communication
- asynchronous computation
- the relative uselessness of search when it comes to harnessing expertise
- eg answering questions such as 'who are the top 3 experts in the world on glomangioma and are they on line right now?'
We'll try and develop our thoughts further ...
[Neil Finlayson's Radio Weblog]
..Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?
Actually, he would .. As it turns out, we believe healthcare is a natural for peer to peer applications in many areas, whilst retaining other applications within a server based model. Actually, I wish we could replace the p2p acronym. I would prefer to have the applications we develop and the Groove platform described as 'group collaboration software' or watever. We find that in the main any endusers cannot really get the Napster picture out of their head. No bad thing, but Napster only one application of p2p. However, this may be being pedantic.
Healthcare provision, (generally from cradle to grave) is a collaborative process. The key person of course is the patient. During the patient's healthcare history, there will be various healthcare personnel that cross the patients path. Mostly, it will probably only be a GP and Dentist, but on many occasions, especially during hospitalisation, many more will be involved.
We all recognise this. But what is happening here? In commercial terms, there is an adhoc team being formed to complete a specific project. After the event, most will not need this information again. They move on to the next 'project'. The patient (the client) of course needs the information as does the Project Mgr (GP). The patient is at the edge of the health system, so why is her information not stored there too? (with backup/archive services available of course).
It would appear sensible that a 'working system' such as healthcare, that inherently works on the edge and has to forms collaborative groups, would benefit from having information systems that inherently support this way of working.
Is it too late though? Will the centre want to cede control? Ah-ha, that's a good, but different question.
12:48:06 PM 
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