Google has a reputation for doing things differently, such as innovative workplace design. I was reading this piece in the New York Times about how Google continually tweaks its search engine to improve it. The man featured in the article, Amit Singhal, is the master of Google’s search ranking algorithm. For anyone who knows even a bit about Google, this guy is pretty high up.
In the article, Mr. Singhal attributed much of Google’s success to their relatively "breakneck" pace of research in contrast to the more leisurely pace observed at universities and institutions.
“I spent the first three months saying, ‘I have an idea,’ ” he recalls. “And they’d say, ‘We’ve thought of that and it’s already in there,’ or ‘It doesn’t work.’ ”
Now, while this is the technology field we’re talking about here, I can’t help but to think about this issue in terms of healthcare research. Yeah, healing occurs over time and human research has its own time limitations; but I think we must ask ourselves, "Can we do more research in less time?" How is it that some investigators seem to have several publications per year and others once every couple years?
Perhaps it is simply a case of some researchers behaving more like Google, and others behaving more like…well, a researcher. I can imagine researchers dealing with issues of project management, technology assistance, quality, and maybe even figuring out how to exist on 4 hours of sleep. Admittedly, I am not a researcher and am only surmising here.
Here is my own example of how research sometimes proceeds slowly:
I’m writing a case series about a group of patients at my work. In order to proceed, I need to contact our institution’s Department of Clinical Investigation. They have a series of hoops and trainings to jump through, checklists to complete, and signatures to obtain. All to perform a formal write up of treatments that have already happened. They estimate this process takes 1 month to complete.
Grrrr. I could have been finished in 1 month!
Labels: Evidence and Technology, Research
A major difference between Google and the health care industry, as you mention, is that they have very different development parameters. As a software company, Google can tweak its code and test it on a single computer for immediate results. A new drug treatment eventually needs human test subjects, and thankfully, this research is not conducted without careful examination of the procedure and thought for its impact.If Google's new lines of code are horribly wrong, no one gets hurt. Imagine if I search for digital cameras and it returns a listing of Chinese restaurants. The potential damage due to a mistake in a health care related research project is much more severe.The number of publications a research group has is not necessarily an indication of their work pace or quality.
Pace: I agree, quantity is not synonymous with quality; and you're correct, the duty to be safe in healthcare research is high. I'm simply posing the question as a "What can we learn from other industries?" thought. If Google wins as a result of their high volume of research and evidence, one might assume that the healthcare profession with the most evidence would be at a similar advantage in the industry.By the way, the Chinese Food analogy is very funny!