The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is launching an initiative to access how rapidly increasing amounts of digital health data and mobile applications can be used to deliver more responsive healthcare programs.
"Data for Health" addresses changes in the healthcare landscape brought on by the digitization of patient information, which led to the development of electronic health records and an explosive increase in digital health data, applications and devices that track human activities.
RWJF officials say secure access to this wealth of information has the potential to help individuals, healthcare providers and communities make smarter, faster decisions that improve the health of the public and promote healthy lifestyles.
“The sheer volume and velocity of data at our fingertips today is unprecedented,” Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, RWJF president and CEO, said in a statement. “As we build a culture of health - a nation where everyone has the opportunity to live longer, healthier lives - it will be critical to ensure communities can effectively use and manage this information in ways that help people get healthy and stay healthy. The Data for Health initiative will be a starting point for identifying what infrastructure is needed to turn this information into an effective tool for improving health nationwide.”
The foundation will host a series of “Learning What Works” events in five cities to hear from local leaders, residents and professionals from a range of sectors on how healthcare trends like digital data can improve health in their communities. Critical issues include how data should be collected, shared, used and protected in ways that help individuals, providers and communities improve health and well-being.
The Health and Human Services Department's Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will participate in the sessions. Karen DeSalvo, MD, national coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS, said she is interested to hear about recommendations for new ideas beyond the development of EHRs.
“We look forward to hearing and learning from communities about their vision of how health information technology beyond electronic health records can advance the public’s health beyond healthcare,” DeSalvo said in a statement. “We appreciate RWJF supporting this conversation and look forward to the findings as it will help shape meaningful health information technology policy for our nation.”
The initiative is led by an advisory committee co-chaired by David Ross, MD, director of the Public Health Informatics Institute, and Ivor Horn, MD, medical director of the Center for Diversity and Health Equity at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
“Community developers, doctors, school districts, public health departments, consumers and local businesses all need data for building and sustaining healthy communities,” Ross said in the statement. “Finding out what problems people want to solve and what health information they need to help solve these problems will help us better understand how to design the infrastructure for collecting, sharing and protecting data in ways that work best for communities across the country.”
The Data for Health advisory committee is made up of public health practitioners, physicians, healthcare researchers, health technology and informatics experts, consumers and representatives of local government and healthcare systems.
“Ultimately, we need an infrastructure in place to support ready access to information necessary for health decision-making," Horn said. "The data and the technology to build this infrastructure exist. But first we need to understand how communities are using and want to use the data, and what systems need to be in place so that it can be easily accessed and shared.”
The advisory committee will hold “Learning What Works” events in the coming months in Philadelphia, Phoenix, Des Moines, Iowa, San Francisco and Charleston, S.C. The committee will issue a report and recommendations in early 2015.
