KP HealthConnet and Care Improvement - George Halvorson Letter

Dear KP colleague:

We all know that KP HealthConnect is a computer system dedicated to care improvement -- to building electronic data bases about patients and populations of patients that can be used to support care, enhance care, and do important research about care. Just about everyone who works and delivers care here understands that process and that strategic direction.

What quite a few people do not know, however, is that the whole KP HealthConnect idea is not a new concept or goal. It isn’t even a fairly recent concept or goal. Even though we truly are pioneers today at Kaiser Permanente in finally actually doing this work, some of our founders very clearly had the idea of using the computer to support care delivery several decades ago -- before anyone else in the world was thinking in those directions. Dr. Sidney Garfield, our founding physician, said that computers would become a major tool for caregivers -- maybe the most important tool. He said that over four decades ago.

Even before Dr. Garfield made those comments, one of his peers and colleagues -- Dr. Morris Collen -- shared that idea and was actually working to build an electronic medical record. Dr. Collen could see how incredibly useful computerized data could be to caregivers -- so he actually started building an EMR for Kaiser Permanente in 1961 using IBM punch cards.

We still have data from those original efforts. Dr. Collen believed that the diagnostic process and the care delivery process would both be improved if physicians had instant access to automated data about patients.

Dr. Collen was right. He was also four decades ahead of the ability of computers to do that work in an efficient way.

Dr. Collen is one of our medical giants. He also invented multiphasic testing, and is well known in world medical circles for his work in that area. He invented the first machine that could run multiple blood tests simultaneously -- and Kaiser Permanente pioneered what later became a whole new testing industry.

Today, the highest honor in medical informatics is the Morris F. Collen Medal. Some call it the Nobel Prize of medical informatics.

He also was a founder of our various medical research programs -- and started us down the path we are on today. The recent study that ran in more than 300 newspapers and magazines across multiple countries about the impact of sleep deprivation on the body weight and depression levels of new mothers is a direct extension of that whole data-based research agenda.

So why am I celebrating Dr. Collen in this weekly letter -- and why am I changing from my practice of not naming specific individuals in my weekly letters? Because Dr. Collen recently celebrated a birthday. He is in his early nineties, and he is still writing books and advising our research teams. I spoke to a group meeting of our research leaders not long ago in Oakland and Dr. Collen was in the front row. After my talk, he asked the toughest question of anyone in the room -- a serious, well thought out, well phrased question about the economics of aging that made me want to salute before answering.

We are making a lot of progress in a lot of areas because of directions that he has led us. So my letter this week is to celebrate Dr. Collen as a physician, thinker, strategist, visionary, and leader. Please join with me in thanking him for his many contributions. I feel honored to have met him and to have had the opportunity to benefit from his insights, his pioneering leadership, and his wisdom.

Be well.

George