An overarching theme from a vendor's first analytics conference is similar to something that that EHR vendors have been saying for years: workflow and organizational culture are at least as important as the technology itself when it comes to healing healthcare through IT.

"It's a whole cultural change from a clinician's point of view," Bryan Bohman, MD, associate CMO of Stanford Hospital and Clinics, as well as CMO of the Stanford-affiliated University HealthCare Alliance, said at analytics company Health Catalyst's inaugural Healthcare Analytics Summit last week.

"You have to understand that it's a process, that medicine is a team sport," Bohman continued. "That's a bridge too far for many physicians today," especially those trained to believe that their judgment should be the last word.

Physicians, of course, will fight any perceived incursion on their turf, but Bohman suggested framing workflow changes as a move to improve their quality of life. "It's nice to know that you're Superman, but it's very stressful," the practicing anesthesiologist said.

With this in mind, Health Catalyst invited Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane — he of "Moneyball" fame — to keynote the opening session. (Beane's speakers' bureau effectively gagged the media on his speech, but other presenters referred often to the 2011 movie starring Brad Pitt.)

To get buy-in for analytics — or any project requiring cultural change — "invite people who aren't normally there,"  said Gene Thomas, CIO of Gulfport (Miss.) Memorial Hospital.

In the Hollywood movie, Pitt's Beane did this by having Jonah Hill's "Peter Brand" character loosely based on ex-Athletics Assistant GM Paul DePodesta, sit in on a meeting with skeptical, old-school baseball scouts to explain how Beane was employing analytics to assess the value of players. Thomas did this with clinical leaders prior to deploying a Health Catalyst enterprise data warehouse in conjunction with the rollout of a new Cerner EHR earlier this year.

In return, Thomas knew he had an important job to do for the clinical staff: Make analytics information relevant and useful. "Data has to be high-integrity, projectable and real-time," he said.

At the event, Health Catalyst released a document called the "Accountable Care Transformation Framework." It mentioned "workflow no less than 30 times.

And Health Catalyst CEO Dan Burton stated what many of the more than 500 people in attendance were thinking: Analytics can become the foundation for health transformation. "Let us resolve to act, to be true catalysts," he said.