Introduction
Traditional brick-and-mortar health care organizations and digital health companies are actively partnering to provide novel, digitally enabled care models to patients. Despite the potential of these new care models, it is critical that they do not inadvertently increase fragmentation of health care services and instead work to promote seamless and safe data exchange.
As highlighted in the AMA Future of Health report (PDF), optimizing technologies and policies that reduce fragmentation are key to enabling the effectiveness of digitally enabled care for patients, providers and caregivers.
Overview
Secure data exchange is vital for the success of digitally enabled care. It promotes coordinated patient care and reduces administrative burdens. The barriers to seamless data sharing are primarily cultural and operational, rather than technical.
This issue brief (PDF) provides practical guidance for clinical data sharing, leveraging real-world examples of organizations that have succeeded in establishing relationships between digital health solutions and their traditional in-person clinics.
Key considerations
Imperatives for advancing data sharing to support digitally enabled care:
- Actively participate in data exchange platforms and simplify contracting.
- Prioritize and build goal-oriented relationships with external organizations and vendors, while also aligning early on data exchange.
- Ensure the integration of external data aligns with the needs of clinicians and prioritize integration into clinician workflow to ensure data is actionable.
- Support the patient experience with functionality that addresses patient needs and preferences, including accessibility, guidance and education, and clinical understanding.
