Better use of data would improve health outcomes in B.C.

published on March 11, 2016 by Derrick Penner, in The Vancouver Sun

Conference told that most data in health care used in accounting and budgeting

Harnessing comprehensive, real-time health data helped researchers beat HIV/AIDS and the lessons learned there can be used to tackle other diseases and conditions, a conference on so-called big data was told in Vancouver Friday.

Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said that over three decades of work in HIV research, his team has learned that doctors and nurses needed to “break the silos” between sectors in health care. Focusing on health outcomes of patients made a real difference in reducing the transmission of the disease, he said.

“The only way we can do that effectively is if we have real-time data,” Montaner said in an interview following his remarks to the Data Effect conference at the Sheraton Wall Centre in downtown Vancouver. “Unfortunately, the system, the way it is set up, discourages (that).”

Despite having made an extraordinary exception for HIV/AIDS, he said, much of the health care system remains focused on using data for accounting and budgeting purposes.

Making better use of the data already collected within health care wouldn’t just deliver better health outcomes, delegates to the conference argued, it is a potential business opportunity within a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that continues to grow as the population ages.

“It’s not only a public-policy imperative, but it’s smart business,” said Miro Cernetig, co-founder of the event’s organizing firm, CityAge Media.

Friday’s conference was the fourth Vancouver edition of CityAge’s Data Effect conference series, Cernetig said, which is aimed at creating a “national conversation” on how to use data that is now collected within health care “that respects privacy, but doesn’t let privacy stop the innovation.”

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Treatment as Prevention®

Julio Montaner

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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Better use of data would improve health outcomes in B.C.

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