By Healthcare Facilities Today

As healthcare organizations become more analytically driven, data is the longest lasting asset in any organization outliving facilities, devices and people, accord to Dale Sanders in a recent  healthsystemCIO.com post. 

Dale Sanders is a senior technology advisor/CIO mentor, for the National Health Services Authority, Cayman Islands.

According to Sanders, as we are beginning to understand data's value, the term ‘data governance’ has emerged to managing and influencing the collection and utilization of data in an organization. If we accept the assertion that healthcare is a knowledge delivery industry, he says, it is our obligation to exploit our data to grow and optimize that knowledge. Data governance is a fairly new idea in healthcare, and organizations have yet to find the happy medium between too much or too little governance.

Sanders offers seven data governance areas to focus on to find the right balance.

1. Balanced, lean governance

2. Quality

3. Access

4. Literacy

5. Content

6. Analytic prioritization

7. Master data management

Click here for the article and more details for each area.