Interview with Paul Wallace, KP
We’re very glad to include Paul Wallace of Kaiser Permanente in our line-up of speakers at the Health 2.0 Spring Fling later this month. Paul will be joining our panel highlighting the changing role of research, so we thought we’d take some time to talk with him about his thoughts on the topic.
In this interview with Indu Subaiya, Paul talks about the evolution of data and makes some great observations. He notes that while researchers were once playing the hunter/gatherer role, they have now become farmers of data. With the technological resources available to researchers today, it is no longer ”necessary to find, capture and protect rare, expensive data…now it’s how can one look at a sea of data, and within that vast amount of data find the elements that you need.”
Not only is technology changing the way data is found and used, but its fast-paced generation and consumption has altered the lifecycle of data. As Paul notes, with more data there are “more questions to be answered, more hypotheses to be tested,” and it is being done simultaneously resulting in decreased cycle times, again transforming research and care.
Lastly, Paul talks about how important it is for researchers to ensure that they’re serving all of the questions that the many stakeholders are asking. Now that the “knowledge supply chain” has extended its focus from being purely physician based to other players, researchers have had to generate knowledge that meets multiple needs and expectations and realize that “knowledge is in the eye of the beholder.”
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