How data velocity changes decisions: The role of information access speed
Faster access to lab results, with no change to the information itself, cut test ordering charges by 25% and stay length by 13% in a hospital ED.
Summary
The study follows a dashboard that showed lab-result availability in real time in one ward of a leading Colombian teaching hospital's emergency department, comparing it with a second ward and with the year before across about 64,000 decisions by 387 physicians. Nothing about the information itself changed, only how quickly physicians could see it. Physicians ordered about 10% fewer tests, total charges fell about 25% (roughly 365 dollars per episode), stays shortened by about 13% (around 75 minutes), and hospitalisation fell by seven percentage points with no rise in 30-day readmissions and higher patient satisfaction. Almost half of the effect came from more targeted follow-up tests, about a third from better reasoning while the case was still fresh, and the remainder from saved manual checking time. The gains were largest under high workload and for uncommon diagnoses. The lesson for managers is to shorten the delay between information becoming available and being used, rather than collecting more data.
Editor's opinion
The value of data depends on how quickly it reaches the person deciding, not only on how much of it there is. Cutting the delay in seeing information changed how decisions were made, giving fewer and better-targeted actions and better outcomes at a lower cost. Investment in getting existing information in front of frontline decision-makers can pay back more than investment in gathering more.
Key concepts
information access speed · data velocity · decision quality · real-time dashboard