Guest Column: Harnessing The Unstructured Content In Your Healthcare Facility

By Dylan Persaud, managing director, Eval-Source

Your healthcare facility has likely acquired several third party applications that interface to your ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. The vast amounts of unstructured data (e.g. patient notes, clinical images, email messages, etc.) these applications produce can be extremely difficult to manage and control. This data also has unique storage, indexing, and tagging challenges that need to be addressed.

Healthcare organizations have always had a difficult time capturing the unstructured data contained within email and other forms of informal office communications. These systems often contain valuable information, links, ideas, and thought leadership. These communication vehicles have become a proprietary means in which company information is shared, yet there seems to be no easy way to leverage the goldmine of information that is created. This issue can have a profound impact on your entire organization ? from patient registration to all the way through to billing.

With the new healthcare reform bill that was just passed, an opportunity exists for both healthcare providers and technology vendors to install technology systems that allow for improved control and consistent management of this unstructured data.