A tabula rasa in data literacy...

February is still close enough to our promises of doing better, reinventing our lives, and becoming new and shiny that perhaps all is not lost.

Are You Asking Too Much of Your Chief Data Officer?

The Harvard Business Review describes the role of the Chief Data Officer by articulating 7 distinct jobs. Those of us wearing consultant hats manage quite a bit of this beneath the hood while attempting to convince clients that there are limits to how piecemeal they can be in their goal to have a data infrastructure within their organizations.

1. Chief Data and Analytics Officer (oversight role but in the absence of a functional team might be too much too soon)
2. Data Entrepreneur (squeezing value out of data)
3.Data Developer (process automation or warehouse development)
4. Data Defender (security)
5.Data Architect (integration/creating better data environments)
6. Data Governance (data oversight and access)
​7. Data Ethicist (preventing misuse of data assets)

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The most common response from clients confronted with their accessible data is a sense of being overwhelmed. Where to start. How to make sense of the legacy data types and "warehousing" to best inform real time estimates or insights.

All engagements begin with a bit of data advocacy and education. Before we were subjected to a cacophony of data "insights" and blaring headlines touting the efficacy of this or that--we had research. A carefully articulated hypothesis perhaps would invite exploration from the bench or the clinical research findings. Good luck keeping up with the publication funnel in our modern times.

I blame the cult of innovation where burgeoning pipelines and escalating profits have become a false profit of value. I can tell you with an excess of confidence that physicians at the point of care are exhausted. They are asked to garner insights from a fun house mirror of spurious findings, bogus endpoints, and suspicious trajectories of profit woven through the healthcare landscape.

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The sheer volume and abundant distortion of claims made in the absence of unbiased and careful review mislead and confuse many healthcare professionals attempting to decide which treatment is best for which patients.

I think we all need a tabula rasa or clean slate. Let's start with what we do know and work from there.

Think, "less Eureka" and more "what is that?"

I am often reminded of continuing medical education where writers are encouraged to step in line to join the lucrative field of writing need assessments for educational funding.

A pharmaceutical company will pay a premium for educational interventions that pave the way for their class of drugs or often more boldly--their specific drug.

There are not many eureka moments left in healthcare. We need to question the questions and challenge status quo answers.

​Join me, won't you?

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