Depending on which website you go to, you’ll learn that either President Abraham Lincoln or educator/ philosopher Philip Drucker came up with one of my favorite quotes: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Regardless of who first spoke those wise words, they neatly encapsulate what Stewards of Change (SOC) has […]
Category: Human Services
SOCI’s 12th Symposium: We’re All in This Together
Given the times we live in, it would be easy for someone to read the first half of the title of Stewards of Change Institute’s 12th Annual National Symposium – “Taking Action During Disruptive Times: Advancing Progress on Innovation, Interoperability and Technology in HHS” – and think there’s a political judgement lurking behind the words. It […]
How can HHS benefit from the Digital Revolution?
We are well into the fourth industrial revolution – an era that provides a range of new technologies bringing together the physical, digital and biological worlds. It is a revolution that impacts digitization on the economy, providing emerging technology breakthroughs of artificial intelligence, robotics, the internet of things and autonomous vehicles, to name a few. […]
Moral Implications of Analytics and Cognitive Computing
As we look forward to the Stewards of Change symposium in a few weeks, I have been thinking about the challenges to using advanced analytics and cognitive computing to strengthen human services programs. Of course, I am not alone. Recently, academic and policy journals have published articles wrestling with the potential moral impact of predictive […]
Where Integrated Data Systems are Already Getting Results
In the weeks before the 12th annual Stewards of Change symposium, many of us are anticipating a somewhat anxious conversation about health and human services systems reform. Supporters of the measures within the Affordable Care Act that promote better sharing and use of data are mindful that Congress has recently taken a first step towards […]
Taking Action During Disruptive Times: Two Exciting New SOCI Projects
(With Thanks to Kresge Foundation and Health Information and Management Systems Society) Wherever any of us may fall on the political spectrum, most professionals working to improve the health and well-being of people in our country can probably agree on this: It’s hard to predict how the disparate pieces of the healthcare puzzle will come […]
A Big Idea – and an Ambitious Approach – for Addressing Major Health Crises
Well, I finally figured out the definition of “huge.” No, I’m not referring in any way to the word as used by the new administration in Washington. Rather, I’m talking about an event at which I had the privilege to speak earlier this month in Orlando, where over 42,000 attendees (yes, you read that right) […]
Spreading the Word on the Impact of Interoperability and Open Data: Our Latest Symposium Focused Sharply on Improving Children’s Lives
Over the past decade, the steadily escalating use of open data has expanded knowledge, driven innovation, enhanced effectiveness and improved outcomes in a growing number of realms, particularly relating to health, healthcare and human services. Stewards of Change Institute, seeing the opportunity (and the need) to expand this work even further, recently held an event […]
Advancing Quickly at a Glacial Pace … and More Musings as Stewards’ 11th Annual Symposium Begins
The world in which Stewards of Change Institute operates – populated by concepts like information-sharing, interoperability, social determinants of health and, most recently, cognitive computing – is changing fast. I know that because I’ve watched the change happen, ever so slowly, for over a decade. Fast and slow simultaneously? Absolutely. The technology and much of […]