Breaking Down Data Barriers: Connecting Dots in Healthcare
Key Highlights:
- Across the healthcare industry, fragmented systems make it harder to share data quickly, which can delay care and increase the risk of errors.
- Health OS addresses these challenges by securely connecting and standardizing data across incompatible systems, enabling bi-directional, real-time exchange of clinical information while maintaining privacy and security.
- By giving a more complete and timely view of health information, Health OS supports better decision-making, more coordinated care, and improved health outcomes.
The healthcare industry spends significant time moving data, cleaning up duplicate records, and managing systems that weren’t designed to work together. This can slow down care providers and health plans, delay access to the care people need, and lead to extra work and missed chances for better, more timely care.
For example, consider Amanda, age 62 with diabetes, high blood pressure, and early-stage kidney disease, who sees three different doctors. Her nephrologist (kidney doctor) might not get her latest blood sugar test results for several days, while her endocrinologist (a specialist in hormone conditions) might miss changes to her medication prescribed by her primary care doctor. These situations occur because this valuable information isn’t quickly exchanged between Amanda’s doctors, leading to possible repeated tests, medication errors, and missed critical information.
Health OS, our bi-directional, clinical data interoperability platform, was built to address these issues, giving consumers and care providers easier access to more complete healthcare information. Ashok Chennuru, Elevance Health’s chief data and digital transformation officer, and Jeff Plante, president, Carelon Insights, outline the ways it integrates data across systems, helps decision-making, and more – while keeping data privacy and security the central focus.
What is a bi-directional, clinical data interoperability platform?
Chennuru: It makes secure exchange of data between different data systems easier, giving patients, care providers, health plans, and other stakeholders more immediate access to complete health information. It also makes the data AI-ready, enabling faster, more effective insights and decision support while maintaining privacy and security.
In the early days of home computers, it was nearly impossible for users of different computer systems to share even a basic word processing document because the two systems couldn’t understand the other’s formatting. This same problem exists between the many data platforms within the healthcare system. Our platform acts as a secure universal translator. It connects otherwise incompatible health record systems and standardizes the data. This makes it possible for care providers and health plans to share and understand data while also keeping it safe.
Why does connecting data matter?
Plante: Many health systems, care providers, and other healthcare organizations use one or more storage and management systems for the data they collect and use. This data, such as medical records, doctor notes, and imaging results, appears in different formats in numerous systems. The work we’re doing adheres to the standards of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Specification and assembles data into a single view, feeding it back into the systems care providers and health plans use every day.
Chennuru: Our data operating system sends this data in two different directions. It pulls clinical data through the data exchange. And when appropriate, be it when information is requested by care providers or Elevance Health teams to perform data analysis, insights are pushed to teams who can use that information to help deliver higher quality care. Information on patient care synchronizes and integrates within multiple secure locations, including member apps, care provider systems, and scheduling and referral documents. This means lab results, prescriptions, and visit notes don’t sit in separate places where no one else can see them. Instead, they flow where they need to go among care providers.
How does this make the healthcare experience better?
Plante: Going back to Amanda’s experience, Health OS facilitates more efficient connectivity whenever there is an update to her healthcare information. It allows various data systems to securely “talk” to each other, providing timely updates to her doctors that helps them deliver better care. Amanda’s kidney doctor can see her A1C trends and medications from other care providers, improving decision-making. Meanwhile, her health plan care manager sees her full appointment history and receives an alert if she starts missing visits, prompting timely outreach. Amanda now has a connected care team, leading to more proactive treatment and a greater sense of support.
The work we’re doing turns clinical and administrative data into real-time, comprehensive insights. By connecting care providers, health plans, and the people they serve, Health OS enables faster, more coordinated care and more accurate health decisions. It’s our goal to improve quality and access to care, helping people feel more confident that they’re receiving the best care for them at the right time.
