In the beginning and simply put, you cannot demonstrably improve what you cannot measure;

and to measure, you need good and accurate data. Data that are fair, accurate, and robust. Why it
is important to create and capture accurate and good data? It because those good data allow you
not only to assess the quality of care, but also to measure the effectiveness of the quality
improvement intervention. Continuous quality improvement depends on determining what
improves quality and what doesn’t by using good data to continually assess and reassess
healthcare quality. More and more, in future arguments about the development of medical care,
the party with the better data will prevail (Cornelius, Lindemann, Schroeder & Schulze, 2019).
how (capturing of data) improve patient care? To answer this question, we need to know that
hospitals produce 50 petabytes of data per year. This mass of information comprises clinical
notes, lab tests, medical images, sensor readings, genomics, and operational and financial data.
At the moment, 97% goes unused. If small amounts of data from many patients are linked up and
pooled, researchers and doctors can look for patterns in the data, helping them develop new ways
of predicting or diagnosing illness, and identify ways to improve clinical care. The information
can be used to help understand more about disease risks and causes, improve diagnosis, develop
new treatments and prevent disease, improve patient safety, evaluate government policy in
healthcare. This is considered as one real example of how data can improve patient care. In
addition, studies proved that better patient safety depends on better data about incidence and
causes, both from research studies and from routine monitoring for timely action (Jonsson &
Øvretveit, 2008).
The creation of knowledge and knowledge management is becoming an established discipline
with many applications and techniques, its adoption in health care has been challenging. Though,
the health care sector relies heavily on knowledge and evidence-based medicine is expected to be
implemented in daily health care activities; besides, delivery of care replies on cooperation of
several partners that need to exchange their knowledge in order to provide quality of care. In
public health decision is mainly based on data and a shift is needed towards evidence-based
decision making. It is obvious that health care can profit from many advantages that knowledge
management can provide.
In addition, business and clinical intelligence are currently essential for helping healthcare
providers gain visibility into opportunities for improvement. It defined by Gartner as “an
umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that
enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and
performance”. One example of business analytical tools used in healthcare is the "Key
performance indicators (KPIs)" which provide organizations with a way to measure the impact of
specific processes and outcomes by comparing baseline performance with changes over time.
KPIs can be used to create the scorecards and performance dashboards that inform decision-
making and the development of best practices.
References:
Cornelius, F., Lindemann, L., Schroeder, A., & Schulze, M. (2019). Medical care data as the
basis for evidence-based health care politics. Der Urologe, 58(8), 910-917. doi: 10.1007/s00120-
019-0980-8
Jonsson, P., & Øvretveit, J. (2008). Patient claims and complaints data for improving patient
safety. International Journal Of Health Care Quality Assurance, 21(1), 60-74. doi:
10.1108/09526860810841165