Systems thinking helps with a holistic understanding of how the parts of the system interact. Complexity of systems is being increased either by adding parts to them or by complication of contexts they operate in, or even by knowledge gained about the systems (yes, earlier even the Earth was considered to be flat).
Let me introduce the “Thougtware” © term here – meaning dependency of our perception on our belief systems and knowledge about what we interact with. Our body systems continuously interact with each other and we impact them as well as they impact us, like a programs running by algorithms they were developed by.
To stay healthy, both “Software” and “Thougtware” development methods require “built-in quality” inherent in design with continuous improvement through frequent feedback and collaboration of the cross-functional team, instead of working in “silos” and fixing flaws too late when they’re too bad. Sometimes it is neglected, running for years “as is” until symptoms start appearing (yes, organizations and humans are systems).
Similar to the “shift left” approach in agile software development, better to focus on subjective experience at the earlier phases of life-cycle rather than objective measures of the direct intervention of “bugfixing”. I was glad to see research1 on the shift of health perspective from a fragmented to a systems and preventive approach, using a holistic model.
For software development, drawings and models of Architecture and development Process are a good practice, for safety-critical programs it is a must. For less critical ones it is sometimes underestimated or neglected. Why? Reasons vary from pusing in a rash to lack of knowledge or experience with tools for systems architecture modeling, or name your excuse… One of the measures of “software health” is a number of “bugs” detected (hopefully not in production), and the root cause could be architectural flaws, environment/interfaces, or inputs/outputs.
Since birth, humans are built by an ideal architecture and the body has no excuses if some of its systems fail to interact as intended, other than triggering symptoms in the form of diseases. Except of lifestyle one of the reasons for those symptoms could be nutritional, informational, environmental. And we may not notice decrease of energy and vitality for years, untill it starts impacting effectiveness or safety for life. For improved health, not everyone may need to know how all details of the body systems “architecture”, but consise holistic knowledge of algorithms by which we are functioning is crucial. Wishing it was teached accordingly at schools and companies.
Let’s contribute to such open learning healing network, from which users could pull in modular way for their own specific needs to embed in everyday lives, instead of being pushed by centralised monolithic health care system which is overloaded, overcommercialized or even lobbyist.
I like the idea of a next-gen healing system based on open learning, that would help people to self-organize with knowledge and tools to understand and manage their health – shifting the value from individual products or services (or lack of them) to holistic approaches taking in account the abundance we are gifted with. For knowledge sources, the system would integrate inputs from different practitioners to create a holistic context for understanding health and healing process, instead of focusing on individual diseases or courses to treat them.
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