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The Networked Health Enterprise

A Vision for 2008

Affiliation of the author: Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs; Director, Informatics Center; Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee.

Correspondence and reprints: William W. Stead, MD, Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, 416 Eskind Biomedical Library, 2209 Garland Avenue, Nashville, TN 37232-8340. e-mail: <bill.stead{at}mcmail.vanderbilt.edu>.

Abstract Informatics and information technology hold the promise of a consumer-centered health enterprise—one that provides quality care at a cost society is willing to pay; one where need-based, adaptive, competency-based learning results in cost-effectiveness of health education; one where team-based health and learning on demand, coupled with monitoring of process outcomes and network access to expertise, guarantee quality. The barriers to this promise are the professional guilds, the cross-subsidies that support the health enterprise of 1998, and the lack of respect for privacy. Collectively, the informatics community needs to develop a compelling vision that will galvanize the health community to action. If the health community does not step up to this challenge, consumers will take advantage of disintermediation. Empowered by the network, they will go outside the system into hands that meet their needs.

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