Why is DIKW (data-information-knowledge-wisdom) important in healthcare?
Think about this, first: what is the goal of healthcare? Why do we need it?
"The fundamental purpose of health care is to enhance quality of life by enhancing health." (Berry, 2018)
A panacea sounds like the best thing man and nature has made until you snap out of a daydream. We live in the real world; not a simulation. Nobody still has found one. All we have are health workers who dedicate most of their time doing things to improve everybody’s health.
A clinician cannot just guess a diagnosis nor pull a remedy out of thin air. Data needs to be gathered. Information needs to be synthesized. Knowledge needs to be acquired and applied. Wisdom will be the guide.
What Data?
"Data is a raw, unorganized facts that need to be processed." (Data vs Information, 2019)
In a clinical perspective, any input that comes out from a patient is data. They may suggest something — say when used as experimental data — but at face value, there’s nothing much to grasp on.
Your face-to-face talk with your doctor is how he/she gets your medical data. Your laboratory tests are also a source of data. Even your current mood is a data.
The Source of Information
Information is derived from combining relevant data. It requires a process of gathering relevant data from the patients, the experts who’ve also handled their cases, their medical records/history, or any sources that may help the doctor.
With all needed data in place, the doctor must consolidate them into a more logical way. His/her knowledge in their respective expertise will be used to produce an information about the patient and the patient’s current situation.
Doctors also make use of other types of patient information: patient data, medical knowledge, and directory information.
The information will then be added to the patient record for reference. How it should be presented varies across different clinicians and different media.
All the acquired and generated information will be used to give proper diagnosis to patients, monitoring of patient’s health, and even giving signals and warnings when something does not look right.
Too little information synthesized causes vagueness. It might put the other party in danger. A “hard-coded" one leaves no room for other doctor’s investigative curiosity.
The Need for Medical Knowledge
I honestly don’t know how a doctor becomes a doctor without knowledge on this matter. Let’s just limit it in a clinical context.
Without knowledge, a clinician will have no idea on what he/she is talking about. Gathering data from a patient is like an office chitchat over a cup of coffee that’s going on for almost half a day that might not end unless someone they fear arrives. You get my point? It’s going nowhere.
Synthesizing data to information will also be a trainwreck. Imagine giving a prognosis of pregnancy-related morning sickness to a biological male who’s only having an acid reflux.
Learning a patient’s medical information is a form of generating knowledge. Now, without knowledge, every information presented is just another set of alphanumeric characters that looks meaningless. A doctor must use these information to form a new set of knowledge.
A doctor’s knowledge is also needed in representing all the information. They need to see a trend or something noteworthy from a set of useful — but seemingly irrelevant — information.
Wisdom in the Field of Healthcare
Knowledge deals with what we learn from things; wisdom makes us understand why things happen. It gives us a clear understanding based from the facts presented right up on our faces. What we do with it and why we should do it is up to us — this is how our wisdom works.
For the Data Flow Diagram, I chose Patient Evaluation process of the Philippine General Hospital.
Sources:
Diffen.com. (2019). Data vs Information - Difference and Comparison | Diffen. [online] Available at: https://www.diffen.com/difference/Data_vs_Information [Accessed 13 Aug. 2019].
Berry, L. (2018). Reclaiming Health Care’s Fundamental Purpose. [online] Ihi.org. Available at: http://www.ihi.org/communities/blogs/reclaiming-health-care-s-fundamental-purpose [Accessed 14 Aug. 2019].
