First account from Harvard

By Jialin Liu | 11 June 2009 | Permanent link | 0 comments

I have had a very packed schedule during my first month at Harvard Medical School – more than 40 seminars and conferences.

The medical informatics research here is very advanced and there are countless opportunities to communicate and exchange ideas, through seminars and lectures organised across the campus and its affiliated hospitals.

The best brains in medical informatics from MIT and other universities are also frequent visitors here, very willing to share new ideas and latest research findings they have.

In this field, I believe Asia falling behind Harvard for decades, in terms of both research and practice. The big hospitals in Massachusetts (Partners Healthcare) standardised patient data have been sharing that for years. Also, while decision support is still a relatively distant to many in Asia, how to improve that is a daily conversation here.

With my Harvard user account, I am able to access Harvard Catalyst, the online resource centre launched last year which contains all the research materials as well as clinical data/observations by clinicians of Harvard Medical Schools, its affiliates and partners. Everyone has his works listed in the system. It not only gives us a superb knowledge base which is readily accessible anytime, but also prompts people to be more active because everything you do is available to all your peers in the system.

The hospital information system here is developed by a company, which operates out of the same premises as the researchers and implementers of the School. The integration of research and practice enables that the best ideas are put in practice in a timely, due manner.

In comparison, in Asia most IT professionals in hospitals spend most of them time maintaining the system, which to be honest is not a very productive use of their time.

Speaking of that, whether you get good people or not is not as important as how you distribute your manpower, often limited in Asia.

And you need a fair evaluation system to make sure that everyone does their bit. What I mean by fair is that you don’t have to focus too much on their means, but their ends. Only this way you can boost innovation and achieve better results.

Standards are also important. Well, here I have an example back home. West China hospital’s laundry and disinfection service has been very successful because we have standards which are strictly followed – now the department also accepts orders from outside the hospital, generating millions of revenue for the hospital every year.

Bio informatics and medical informatics are tightly integrated here at Harvard – a practice we have started to seen but not yet prevalent in Asia. But again this demonstrates the shift of focusing from building systems to really driving outcomes.

I’ve also visited lots of hospitals in the Boston metropolitan area – thanks to the frequent, and free, transport that links all these facilities together. This convenience also plays an important role in boosting exchange.

Of course, themselves ranking the top in the US, affiliated hospitals of Harvard Medical School are not an apt representation of the standard across the country. However, they represent a direction practitioners should be moving onto.

It has been a big overwhelming during my first month here, as you could probably have realised from my words. There are lots of new things for me, but more importantly, I know how I should take my next step when I get back to West China hospital.

This, I would say, is the most practical achievement.