It's All in the Frame: Promise and Perils, Risks and Benefits

Peter J. Morris

doi:10.18043/ncm.80.4.213

This issue of the North Carolina Medical Journal is about the promise—and the perils—that technology can and will bring to population health in our lifetime.

Did you note that little hedge there? We've been hearing about the promise, just around the bend, for a lifetime. It's still not… quite… here. This issue explains both the halting and the surging progress toward that goal.

There's also the excitement—and the alarm—of the promise of big data. It sounds great: inform our decisions, give us access to the best protocols, help us avoid the unnecessary and costly and non-value-added, and move us to the Holy Grail of avoiding bias in providing health care and investing more in health. It keeps driving us forward. Then we remember that big data is assembled from our data—our personal protected health information—and we aren't so sure we're comfortable with that.

But then we can't say we've been comfortable with the inequitable delivery of health care and the disparate health outcomes our current decision-making processes have delivered, can we? So, we look for data-driven solutions informed with a head and a heart. It's still not… quite… here. But it's coming.