Healthcare is at a crossroads as it emerges from the pre-digital age. Patient health data reside in silos controlled by non-communicative proprietary systems in physician offices, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmacies, labs, wearable and other IoT medical devices, and even apps on mobile phones. The ability to combine and exchange this information across these systems, known as “interoperability”, has been historically limited.
Organizations that hold health-related data have been reluctant to share, as they consider patient data proprietary, and their business asset. Despite an individual’s legal right to access and use their medical information through the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), these same institutions often mistakenly deny access, invoking HIPAA as their defense. This inability to leverage patient health data trickles directly into the care continuum and negatively affects patient outcomes.
With the healthcare ecosystem now intently focused on results instead of services, data are critical for assessing new drugs and devices, evaluating health system performance, monitoring product safety, complying with regulatory requirements, and determining value. The path forward is simple if people could easily acquire, organize and, if they choose, share an integrated, comprehensive, and continually updated version of their Patient Health Information (PHI) on a real time basis in an electronic format (ePHI). Building partnerships between providers who generate the data and individuals and institutions who need the data to improve patient outcomes, unleashes a personal digital health revolution that will transform healthcare and provide a solution that leads to better outcomes in a 21st century learning healthcare ecosystem
Driven By the Patient Data Revolution
