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This gets my attention

by Dennis Howlett on June 26, 2008

The other day, my good friend Vinnie gave me a hard time over my position regarding SAP Business ByDesign. That’s cool. We’d both rather take positions and then slug it out. Neither of us is wrong nor right but the debates matter because it’s one way that readers can decide for themselves what is most important to them. I took the story to a ‘higher court’ where I expanded the debate from a software only perspective.

In truth, Vinnie’s contention:

And the answer, unfortunately is, sensors, and scanners and mobile devices have been helping them a lot more than in recent years than enterprise software has. While enterprise software continues to increase its part of the IT budget faster than other tech categories.

…is pretty much right for the healthcare industry. It may not be so true in other service industries and certainly not in knowledge businesses. Then along comes Phil Baumann, who points me to Blog ROI, it’s about value stupid. Phil used to be an accountant who saw the error of his ways and became a healthcare professional. His position:

Simple question: why would a hospital have a blog? Or use Twitter? Or maybe even FriendFeed? Simple answer: value.

A hospital aught to be one of the most valued kinds of facilities in our communities. Every effort aught to be encouraged for such organizations to optimally utilize those resources which can improve the delivery of care, expand an organization’s presence, and even generate positive returns from the investments in those resources.

But not every organization blogs. Not every one needs to. Why? Because the theme of returns and cost efficiency have been propounded so heavily into our heads that we overlook the obvious. We need to kick ourselves and say: It’s about value, stupid.

I’m sure Vinnie would have something to say about that but Phil makes the case very well with a good list of things that might derive benefit. As a low cost, value delivery mechanism, blogs are pretty hard to beat. But as he says:

Whatever your background, a blog is a good start to a healthier hospital. Then again, you could just let someone else do all the talking for you while you keep handing cash over to lawyers and PR wizards instead of your nurses and doctors and capital equipment.

I’m not going to argue with that. If correct, then it gets more of Vinnie’s sensors, RFID tags etc into the hands of those delivering care. Rock on.

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Tagged as: healthcare, Innovation, SAP Business ByDesign

  • @Amanda

    I get your frustration with hyperbole. Hype is everywhere about what blogs or Web 2.0 can do. I get it. It numbs my mind too!

    Not all hospitals *need* a blog per se. But there are side effects to the practice, especially since there is a gap (from my perspective) between the healthcare industry and the technologies they could use. A blog sparks interest in what's going on in the world. It can be valuable if done right and with care.

    Hospitals operate 24/7, which makes it easy for (some) key administrators from keeping up-to-date with our changing world. My hope in sparking interest in blogging (which was just one example) is that my industry gets better and exploits the chance to interact with the greater community.

    If I made the project sound SUPERCALIFRAGALISTICALLY VALUABLE, well then that's my fault as messenger and novel blogger, not the concept I'm hoping to convey.

    Namaste!
  • @Dennis: at the risk of getting you started on it, "$xxx million"? Change the $ to a £ and add an "x". Stupidly expensive - and *for nothing that will change the health service experience for 95% of people*! Gah! Next up: national ID database. £20bn to make sure they know who all the law-abiding subjects are! Way to ossify the underclass and ensure only the *really smart* terrorists can operate!
  • @Dennis - agreed: it's easy to get bogged down in the terminology, and a word like "blog" is far too ambiguous to be useful. What it means to you is radically different from what it might mean to an MP, and I can imagine the scene at a departmental meeting in a hospital when it's announced they're rolling out "a blog" for wards. My father-in-law has just come out of hospital (nothing serious, happily) and I found the poor use of systems and the sheer inefficiency stunning. (And many of the same problems were evident when my wife went private, so it's not unique to the state sector.) An localised "internet of devices" for individual hospitals seems like a much better investment at this point than a central NHS database, at any rate...
  • Central NHS database? That $xxx million project by our friends at Oracle? Don't get me off on that one.
  • Tending to agree with Vinnie on this one. I've only spent five minutes thinking about it, but I just can't see what value a blog adds for a hospital - over, say, an electronic board for each bed that holds data on things like how often it's been changed, what the patient needs to eat and when, their drug protocols, maybe even when they've been visited – or a facility for them to document their own symptoms or questions for medical staff. (OK, you might call that last feature a "blog". But really. No.)
  • @Richard: It would be way narrow to restrict thinking to 'blog' because we're now seeing the technology being subsumed into all sorts of portal style apps etc. but you're on the right track. Internally, they could serve as very useful devices for cutting through the amount of bureaucracy that goes with hospital admin etc. This is something I know about as I served as CFO for a healthcare group back in the day and from what I've seen, things have got worse, as confirmed by my healthcare trust procurement officer son-in-law. From what I know about the US, it's worse still.
  • @vinnie: I've seen some very good healthcare stories around RFID for ensuring that the right drug and instrument assembly is available for operations, and for automotive parts assembly tied to logistics. I've also seen some excellent community case studies where this good ol' social media stuff is tied to in-home sensors as diagnostic agents for elderly and infirm people confined to their homes. I'm not saying it's either/or (though I'd argue the social computing cost requirements are very low) but I would argue it can be either/and.

    The software only angle is a different style of argument but we both know we can agree to differ on that one.
  • Dennis, happening in many industries - logistics, retail, utilities, asset tracking...

    it is what Sun calls the Internet of Things. Devices, tags, sensors etc etc do what they are told, don't blog - or at least don't disagree with you :)
  • @Amanda - we know you hate the blogosphere. No need to shout it. Makes you look stupid.
  • I certainly do not hate the blogosphere Dennis. I think someday - tamed - it has great potential.

    As to the shouting, for a brief moment, you had me going. I almost thought you were serious.

    The hyperbole with the CAPS is clearly progressive. Stupid indeed. It's slapstick. demonstrating the emptiness of the ongoing "value" claim and it's now vapid repetition.

    Bottom line: My comment was really really valuable.

    - Amanda
  • Blogging is valuable. It's really valuable. It's really really really valuable. REALLY!! I'M REALLY SERIOUS THIS TIME! IT'S HORRENDOUSLY SUPERCALIFRAGALISTICALLY VALUABLE!!!!

    Good Lord.

    - Amanda
  • I like "saw the error of his ways".

    Sort of, rather I saw the error of others' ways and got tire of that whistle in my mouth.

    RFID tags would be a big help in delivering better healthcare (I can't tell you how many times I've had to deal with the problem of no supplies (due I'm sure to none other than some bad inventory costing system).

    Glad this got your attention. Rockin' on.
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