Another swerve in the road
It's been a long, and yet contextually short while since I made the first idealistic post in this blog.
It's been six short months, yet so filled with epiphanies that the walls of my skull have been remodeled into an entirely new multiverse.
Six months ago I was one of the shriller voices in the din at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference and raging with a righteous fire.
Five months and two weeks ago my VP decided that I was ready to be hurled at the bigger picture.
Since then, I've learned about hidden politics as well as how to occasionally win at those politics. Since then I've learned about Risk Management and how this blackhat vs whitehat game is ridiculously narrow-minded. It's not us versus them, it's not good versus evil, the binary judeo-christian view fails utterly to address the fact that there will ALWAYS be risks and concerns on both sides of the fence. This becomes triply clear in a healthcare context. It's not about safeguarding patient information vs the lazy hospital staff. It's not about those nasty privacy people rendering the emergency room impotent and immobile, stuck in place with a web of red tape.
It's about Risk Management. Risk identification and mitigation but also Risk enabling. Every time we try to save a life we take a risk: the only way to avoid sharing health care information is to stop providing healthcare. The only way to have a perfecty impenetrable registration system is to never register anyone.
While that will keep the lawyers and insurance companies happy, it leaves people who care out in the cold.
So that's my new vision, and while it's shaky still I can't look back. From now on, I won't be standing on tables screaming about good guys versus bad guys: I'll be screaming about how we all need to sit down and work together in a larger, more mature, framework.
It's been six short months, yet so filled with epiphanies that the walls of my skull have been remodeled into an entirely new multiverse.
Six months ago I was one of the shriller voices in the din at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference and raging with a righteous fire.
Five months and two weeks ago my VP decided that I was ready to be hurled at the bigger picture.
Since then, I've learned about hidden politics as well as how to occasionally win at those politics. Since then I've learned about Risk Management and how this blackhat vs whitehat game is ridiculously narrow-minded. It's not us versus them, it's not good versus evil, the binary judeo-christian view fails utterly to address the fact that there will ALWAYS be risks and concerns on both sides of the fence. This becomes triply clear in a healthcare context. It's not about safeguarding patient information vs the lazy hospital staff. It's not about those nasty privacy people rendering the emergency room impotent and immobile, stuck in place with a web of red tape.
It's about Risk Management. Risk identification and mitigation but also Risk enabling. Every time we try to save a life we take a risk: the only way to avoid sharing health care information is to stop providing healthcare. The only way to have a perfecty impenetrable registration system is to never register anyone.
While that will keep the lawyers and insurance companies happy, it leaves people who care out in the cold.
So that's my new vision, and while it's shaky still I can't look back. From now on, I won't be standing on tables screaming about good guys versus bad guys: I'll be screaming about how we all need to sit down and work together in a larger, more mature, framework.
posted by Gila Pyke at 9:56 a.m.
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