Is the Vision the Mission?

Is the Vision the Mission?

 

 

Many countries, among them Norway, have over the last years developed very ambitious plans on use of information technology within the healthcare system. Most of the plans express visions and goals where "all" healthcare institutions, and "all" health care workers, are connected in national (and international) computer networks.

In Norway these goals have partially been achieved as the majority of all health care institutions are connected into the Norwegian Health Net. In addition to mail lists, news and web, electronic discharge and reports, telemedicine services within radiology, dermatology, ENT, cardiology, gynaecology, internal medicine, psychiatry and ophthalmology are integrated into the network. Most of the services have (so far) simply digitized the past as the paper-based patient formations and journal simply have been replaced with electronic files. The potential of reorganizing the health care organisation based on the digitised, ambient accessibility to all relevant information has (all most) not been touched upon.

Based upon the lessons learned it is possible to put the last first because those who have been behind can learn from all the basic mistakes done by the front runners.

And my main advice is: do not start with the thousand flowers. Create a national (or international) master-plan within which the thousand flowers must grow. Only through a controlled process will enable the "all to all" solutions to be accomplished