This Sunday I was listening the Aled Jones on Radio 2 \u2013 as he was interviewing Mark Kermode of BBC.TV\u2019s Culture Show. Mark posed a profound question:<\/p>\n
When you visit the cinema, do you like to watch the kind of film that starts with a caption saying \u201cThis is a True Story\u201d or maybe you prefer the kind with a caption saying \u201cThis is a story inspired by Actual Events\u201d?<\/p>\n
He suggested that it\u2019s best to assume that the first kind is largely a fiction, whereas the latter is almost completely so. Personally, I don\u2019t mind which ever kind it is, for sometimes I actually enjoy being fooled as long as it\u2019s good harmless fun and it\u2019s entertaining \u2013 AND as long as I don\u2019t think someone is deliberately fooling me. But then I started wondering: How would I know if they were trying to fool me? Or more worryingly, whether I was fooling myself?<\/p>\n
Since the 1850s there have been various \u201cRealism\u201d movements in the fields of cinema, art and literature \u2013 featuring the search for literal truth and pragmatism \u2013 a representation of objects, actions, or social conditions as they actually are without idealisation or presentation in abstract form \u2013 each of these movements was based upon a philosophy that universals exist independently of their having been thought up, and that physical objects exist independently of their being perceived. In this age of political and media \u201cspin\u201d maybe there\u2019ll come a return to such a philosophy? In the mean time, as long as we are aware that the film we\u2019ve chosen to watch is intended as fiction, and is billed as such, most of us won\u2019t mind \u2013 indeed we might even view it as escapism \u2013 yet in many situations wouldn\u2019t it be nice to feel that we are connected to a representation of events that\u2019s more real, rather than just some one else\u2019s imagined story?<\/p>\n
When a patient in the healthcare system, I think I\u2019d rather be treated by professionals who check and double check what they\u2019re doing, and are working within a system that someone has designed to be fail safe \u2013 and is measured to be so. I\u2019m hoping that the medics, nurses and administrators know the difference between what\u2019s real and what is imagined. On this week\u2019s Panorama (BBC March 8th 2010) it was suggested that some hospitals have much higher mortality than others, so this isn\u2019t an insignificant hope. The three hospitals featured had all been flagged as having high mortality rates, yet had all been rated \u201cFair\u201d or \u201cGood\u201d by the Care Quality Commission. This left me thinking that their may be more imagination around in the NHS than hard data.<\/p>\n
The thing is, most everyone relies on data (via their 5 senses or their intuition) as if pure and unfiltered \u2013 under the assumption that this is all there is. But there\u2019s always more to be known, and some of that missing knowledge may literally be the difference between life and death.<\/p>\n
Numerical data in particular is actively avoided by many \u2013 even by professionals, be they the designers of the system or an individual who works within it. Many people left school determined to avoid numbers for the rest of their lives \u2013 when confronted by even the simplest statistic or numerical puzzle they will happily tell you \u201cI don\u2019t do numbers.\u201d Since seeing the Panorama programme I\u2019m now wondering how many people (clinicians, managers, inspectors) working within the health sector take such a view. Or maybe there\u2019s a full-proof test that every prospective healthcare worker must pass before they\u2019re allowed to practice? Can anyone reasure me about this?<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago some very powerful yet delightfully accessible software was launched \u2013 called BaseLine\u00a9. It has been created so that people can have a kind of 3rd eye perception that mitigates the tendency to fictionalise \u2013 so that people can together assess what\u2019s really happening. It\u2019s designed to be a kind of dispassionate \u201cfly on the wall\u201d or a well-positioned \u201csecurity camera\u201d \u2013 and has been designed to be so easy to use that even the numerophobic will want to use it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s actually free software, and even the full version costs under \u00a350 \u2013 this is deliberate in order to maximize the possibility of it becoming a health sector standard. Having a standard tool will mean that people won\u2019t have to debate the validity of the statistics, and can move directly to discussing the reality of what\u2019s been happening, what\u2019s happening now, and more importantly what\u2019s likely to happen if nothing changes. Let\u2019s see how long it takes clinicians and managers to discover its power?<\/p>\n
www.saasoft.co.uk<\/p>\n\n\n
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This Sunday I was listening the Aled Jones on Radio 2 \u2013 as he was interviewing Mark Kermode of BBC.TV\u2019s Culture Show. Mark posed a profound question: When you visit the cinema, do you like to watch the kind of film that starts with a caption saying \u201cThis is a True Story\u201d or maybe you … <\/p>\n