When I think about data, I am reminded of the Aesop fable about a miser who hides his gold by burying it in his backyard1 :
Data, like the miser’s gold, can be “buried” in numerous locations, with nurses spending hours manually inputting a large part of that “gold” into electronic health records. Nurses, similar to the miser continually digging up and reburying gold that he will never use, must ask themselves, “Are you working for your data, or are your data working for you?” In this column of Technology Today we look at the multiple facets of data in the digital age and highlight the implications for nursing.
Consider the following:
That’s a lot of data. Are we becoming data hoarders who collect data that overwhelms us and will never be used?3 Moreover, are we failing to collect the data we need to successfully transform health care?...