What are you going to do with all that data?

Informationweek.com: “The rollout of e-prescription, digital medical record and other clinical systems by healthcare providers is undoubtedly creating gigantic new mountains of data. The next big challenges for healthcare is in using that data to make better clinical decisions and save costs, and becoming more proactive in helping patients avoid imminent medical problems. “It’s estimated that in five years, one-third of world’s data will be medical data,” Noffsinger [Richard Noffsinger, CEO of Anvita Health] says. “There are tons of medical data now, and that’s growing,” he says.” – Pharmacists are, by nature, driven by data. We analyze hundreds of data points every day; lab values, medication dosages, cultures, patient demographics, etc. Gathering data has never been a problem, knowing what to do with it is a whole different story. Finding someone that can turn raw data into discrete packets of usable information is like finding your very own genie in a bottle. It sounds like a good job for an IT pharmacist.