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. […]

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 […]

Our 11th National Symposium, the Opioid Epidemic . . . and an Opportunity for Progress

One of the big lessons learned in the aftermath of 9/11 was that the agencies, departments and even individual officials of government couldn’t operate optimally because, in simple terms, they were working in silos and therefore weren’t able to communicate with each other. In a commendable response to that reality, politicians mainly put aside their […]

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 […]

Are we at the point of a fundamental change in the role of IT in Human Services?

I’ve been working now for some 27 years in Human Services in -roles mostly related to the advanced use of IT by the business.  I was there through client server mainframe replacement in the early 90’s, business intelligence in the late 90’s, the Internet in the 00’s, composite applications and SOA in the late 00’s […]

Looking for Answers: From the Opioid Crisis . . . to a Network of Networks . . . to a New Curriculum

Open data, information-sharing, data standards and interoperability may not be the answers to every question, but there’s no doubt that they are pivotal components in addressing many challenges confronting the health and human services field. And the latest – and most urgent example to buttress this point is the exploding opioid/heroin epidemic sweeping the country. […]

Looking Back to See the Future More Clearly

As the first month of 2016 zooms by, Stewards of Change is embarking on what promises to be its busiest and most productive year ever – which leads me to think about how far our field has come during the decade since SOC came into being. In particular, I remember our first national symposium at […]