MedHacks

For my part in MSHI’s HI201 class, I asked the students to post questions on Twitter. So far only @wendijoyce has complied. Here are my answers to her questions:

Q: Where are we in the development of #EA for the Philippine eHealth or HIS?

A: In a proper EA methodology, you need to first identify the scope of your enterprise and then its stakeholders. In a national eHealth strategy, the enterprise is the whole country making it a very complex enterprise with many stakeholders often with competing interests. One way to approach this activity is to partition by consolidating the government perspective first and then widen through public discourse and hearings.

So the answer to the question is that DOH, PhilHealth and DOST have consolidated their viewpoints into the eHealth Common Government Platform (view) and they will present this for public comments on October 20-21, 2014. It is far from over and far from perfect. It is through participation that the EA can reflect the viewpoints of as many stakeholders as possible.

Viewpoint: a stakeholder’s perspective
View: a unified blueprint that contains all the stakeholders’ perspectives

Q: If #EA serves as a framework, should we stick to it, or can it be revised/evolve along the way while it’s practiced?

Frameworks are attempts at organizing complexity. Have you tried arranging your books? Sometimes you try one (alphabetical) but then change your mind (by height). Then you Googled and learned that there is Dublin Core – a way to arrange books properly so that you can go to another library and find your way without knowing the librarian there. You learn that Dublin Core is a standard. Arguably, EA’s need to be well-thought out and researched. And there is a science to building EAs (TGAF, Zachman, etc).

For sure, building expensive complex health IT systems without an EA is formula for disaster. And having an EA does not mean you won’t fail — but you’ll know you’re in a path to failure early.

Having said that, you also need to be on the lookout for risks and if those risks are related to a wrong EA. In these cases, you should revise the blueprint through the agreed change management process.

Q: How do we know we’re in the right path to building them? That it’s “correct”?

In COBIT5, you set the benefits, risks and resources based on your engagement with the stakeholders. These are your milestones. Are you achieving your benefits? Are the risks being controlled? Are your resources enough? These tell you that you are on the correct path. Monitoring the “benefit-risk-resources” triumvirate is the key to governing your IT project.