As any good technologist would do, I thought about the different types of users and how they would access information. Then I thought about "what" information they needed. So, in a healthcare informatics setting (after all, that is what we are talking about here), to me, there are two types of users who could benefit from informatics. The Active Intelligence Users and the Passive Intelligence users.
Active Intelligence:
Take an ER doc, for example. She sees a multitude of patients in a single day, works ungodly hours (trust me, I know a few) and probably works in more than one hospital. If you asked her if she is up to date on the latest research in heart conditions (after all, if you have a heart attack, you are not going to your local world renowned cardiologist, you are running to the ER), she would either laugh at you or worse, walk away in a huff, vowing never to speak to you again. Enter the words that we are all familiar with, Clinical Decision Support. This is a form of active intelligence. Delivery of information to the end user ( our heroine in this case ), at the "point of care", where she can quickly browse through the latest guidelines on heart conditions before seeing the patient or fancier still, input patient information directly into her "eyeball wearable device" and the suggestions are automagically transferred to her brain.
Passive Intelligence:
Passive intelligence in much simpler, but not any less important. We have always heard that "history is a good teacher" (whether we listen to history is another question altogether), but for the sake of this blog, let's say history is indeed, a good teacher. Who are the cool customers of this type of intelligence? Your researchers, your administrators and the people who have to run the "business of healthcare".
So, there you have it, two broad categories of intelligence (and I am sure some of you may have thought of umpteen number of other types of intelligences), but that's your problem!
