data lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition...

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
- Antoine de Saint Exupery

A few friends invited me to Beaufort, North Carolina for the weekend. Not my typical coastal haunt but saying we had fun is a huge understatement. 

Yes we did end up on a sail boat but the part that got me thinking--induced by staring out of the car window on the way down--we are all selling something.

All of the shops want you to purchase and they hoist the large banners to prove it. Everything is on sale and everything is a bargain and you need it all now. Clearly this isn't only in small coastal communities. Think about all the news, magazines, podcasts, newsletters, and data now being packaged for subscription service.

I doubt auto shops want you to know how simple it is (in most cases) to change your own oil. Restaurants are feeding the trend to make us feel good about not cooking--curbside pick-ups to consume at home around your own kitchen table abound. What if doing our own taxes, shopping at farmer's markets, or cleaning our own homes became de rigueur?

I would argue that many of us can manage our own data questions once we learn the ropes. Or at the very least learn to understand the limits of insights gleaned from information we happen to be collecting--either actively or passively.

The graphic below is a perfect example of how often we might be tempted to rely on others for insights. Roger Peng, demonstrates how important a good data question is to the goal of data science. The buzz is all around for machine learning but we all can contribute to creating high quality questions--answerable by good data (strength of evidence).

When you begin looking for data--in my case mostly open source--you need to be fully transparent. I began snooping around a few years ago to see what I could bring data clients to help them appreciate the immediate need for a data governance plan.

In many cases, there was not a single person charged with managing company data. In healthcare this can be problematic for sure. It was this process that led me to Nicola Askham. Nicola is the leading data governance coach in the UK and we quickly began having conversations. Over the course of a year or so we realized that many of our discussions might bring value to both of our networks. We decided to host a free Data Governance Webinar and invite one and all.

In healthcare, responsibility for the scale of data we are facing in modern analytics can be overwhelming. Now that insights have been liberated from dusty medical charts stored in file cabinets--now what? Do we have policies in place that allow us to be confident in the quality of our data?

Missing data, the wrong data, or incorrectly merged records can all compromise patient outcomes and most importantly patient safety.

If you are new to the conversation, begin here with Nicola's blog post, How to Write a Good Data Governance Policy. Send along any questions and we will address them in the webinar.

And then join us tomorrow at 11:30 EST--Data Governance for Healthcare.

Smooth sailing ahead or if things work out--the "beam reach"...

"A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition."--Henry Miller

Watch data governance for healthcare webinar here:

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