We have expectations about the transaction that is going to unfold with the person in front of us based on our knowledge and observation. And we get it wrong. So we use tools to guide us through these. Intake tools that prompt us to ask questions that our assumptions would guess at incorrectly, tools that ask questions that aren’t relevant to the consumer based on prior data, digging up conversations that have been had before that bring the suffering of the past back into present. Can we personalise the process to raise issues that your data suggests you may be facing?

Can we also go the other way? Can we capture data and then have this data act for us? Can we wire up the information systems to trigger larger sequences on behalf of the practitioner? Can the automated systems like If This Then That trigger business logic in the background to start process without human interaction? Sending a referral, querying a dataset, finding resources?

And over the long term? Can we see patterns in admission data? Can we notice nuances in patterns indicating severity of episodes? Target uses purchasing information to assess the likelihood of a customer being pregnant and targets them accordingly. Can we not pre-empt the needs of people based on how they do or don’t appear in datasets?