Specialization is healthcare has gotten to a point where body parts and functions are being sliced and diced into so many different parts and each has a separate specialist. I remember that, a few years ago, I had to be seen by an Electrophysiologist (who focuses on your heart’s timing, or electrical, system and on diagnosing and treating irregular heartbeats or arrhythmias) in the cardiologist’s office (no worries, I am fine!). That was the first time I learned that such a specialist existed.

On the one hand, it is great to see that people devote their entire life to become experts at such a minute level, which hopefully translates to better care. But, you also have a problem that when you become so focussed on one such thing,  one wonders whether the specialists understand all the interdependencies with all other things and provide a holistic treatment. One hopes that the glue to all of this is your general practitioner, but that depends!

Software in Higher Ed is fast approaching this model and all the problems associated with the healthcare generally applies here too!

The terms you hear in Higher Ed information technology circles that parallels this are “best of breed” and a single integrated system. Frankly, the proliferation of technologies in the past few years have made it impossible to have a single integrated system to conduct all businesses of the institution. But, just like the healthcare specialization, several vendors have jumped on the idea that there are opportunities to target the individual administrative units on campus to satisfy their particular needs with a specialized software. This has resulted in just way too many software purchases or desire to purchase them which, in turn, creates huge mess.

Typically, in the healthcare situation, the patient and their general practitioner discuss an issue and jointly decide the course of action. Increasingly, the patient drives this decision, informed by the opinions of friends and family as well as the “internet”. Sometimes, the general practitioner is not consulted at all and is told after the fact.

In an institution, the same happens. Typically, an administrative unit has needs but the solution they are looking for seems pre-determined. They have consulted with their colleagues about a software and they simply want it. In some cases, they consult the IT organization, but the solution offered by IT is generally not satisfactory, so the IT organization yields. In other cases, the IT organization is not even consulted.

After procuring the software, IT organization involvement is inevitable, just the same way as a general practitioner in healthcare. IT needs to worry about data security, the interdependencies and integration. In most cases, these are so complex that the cost far exceeds the cost of the individual software. This is not any different than the mish mash of healthcare systems and the lack of proper coordination and integration of all the information and the cost associated with it.

I should say that in a small institution like Wellesley, this is a little easier to manage than larger institutions, but this still is a serious problem and a significant contributor to the cost of education. There are no easy answers – the individual administrative units have a job to do and they need to do it as efficiently as they can, but at what overall cost should there be a proliferation of systems? And what is the optimal number of systems an institution should tolerate?

For example, there are systems for career services which allows alumnae to participate. The same alumna also has account in a different alumnae system and the choice to describe current and past work based on the type of industry can be inconsistent between the two. Then there is a parking management system, orientation management, student judicial system, a volunteer/class management system, student org management system…. I can’t wait for a system to manage the rest rooms on campus!

Software such as Salesforce provide a framework where many of these can co-exist through pre-defined integrations, which is a good thing. This is like the nirvana of “Electronic Health Record“. If and when it works as intended and fully adopted, regardless of the specialist that you see (such as the one who only knows to treat the middle right toe!), the information will be available across the board for everyone to see (including the specialist for the right middle finger and the general practitioner) so that they can act based on all the valuable information.

But we have a long way to go both in health care and higher ed software!