Future Directions in Healthcare Systems Engineering

摘要

Over the past few years, it has been increasingly recognized that the techniques and skills from the field of systems engineering are needed to help solve the increasing complexity of healthcare systems. Systems engineering offers methods to manage the complexities and numerous teams required to create large systems, while delivering a result that can meet the designer's expectations. Birthed in the complex military and aerospace systems of the 1950s and 60s, systems engineering skills have evolved to incorporate analytical model-based methods and agile software development techniques. We see many of these same complexities appearing in the healthcare space. The rapid adoption of centralized electronic health records along with connectivity among many different types of medical devices has created a large information system. Much effort has been and is being spent working on effective interoperability among these systems, which is a necessary precondition for what is emerging. Three key technology changes will fundamentally change healthcare and make the lessons from systems engineering even more important to apply.