A U.S. & U.K Collaboration Around Health Data and IT - Why It's about More than Tackling Adult Obesity
Two heads are better than one, and perhaps, more innovative? In 2014, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) embarked on a unique, cooperative approach to health data and Information Technology (IT) tools to improve the quality and efficiency of the delivery of care in both countries. Simply by virtue of expanding the field, greater possibilities and potential exists in sharing data, knowledge and experiences in health IT adoption and activities to spur the marketplace. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed last year, outlined areas of collaboration which have evolved over time to noticeable progress. And this progress shows achievable results in three main workstreams around the topic of adult obesity, a shared national priority for both countries.
- Sharing Quality Indicators - which involves identifying and sharing best practices in the design and use of quality indicators or specific measures of health care quality. This work area includes making use of readily available hospital inpatient administrative data, and identifying and cataloging obesity-related measures to determine where comparable measures exist between two separate, different, yet relatable systems. A longer term vision is to jointly leverage technical data and experts to develop common guidelines for quality indicators, and how they are used to improve health interventions and outcomes in both countries.
Progress - Both countries have worked hard to identify similar measures to compare such as functional outcomes after knee surgery where connections to adult obesity have been drawn. Both teams are now working toward bringing together the data for comparison and analysis. The hope is that the common measures and priorities will help to identify and share best practices across the Atlantic.
- Liberating Data and Putting it to Work - focuses on open health data and improving data interoperability (different tech systems and software talking to each other) standards to improve data sharing as it relates to clinical care.
Progress - Both the U.S. and UK teams have identified data sets related to obesity that are already available as open data sets or can be made open data sets with little effort. The teams are also documenting the similarities and differences across the data sets as well as the limitations within each; for example some data sets are strictly survey data while some data sets include physician reported data. In addition to data sets related to obesity, both the US and UK are exploring data sets related to the social determinants (economic and social conditions that may affect one's health status) of health including the built environment that may have a relationship to obesity. Currently, data sets related to green space, walking/biking infrastructure and public transportation are under exploration with the caveat that some recent research indicates that these types infrastructure may have a minimal effect on obesity rates. There will be a very exciting call to action/announcement as it relates to this particular effort at the 2015 Health Datapalooza so stay tuned or better yet, attend the event!
- Priming the Health IT Marketplace- seeks to identify and address barriers that currently exist for small and medium enterprises/start-ups in both countries seeking to innovate in the health IT space.
Progress - The US and UK teams are working together to offer a series of in-person workshops over 2015 to enable UK and U.S. entrepreneurs, startups and developers to learn from each other and from regulatory experts about UK-US strategic/legal frameworks for health IT. Priority topics will include: strategic health IT plans, Electronic Health Record (EHR) adoption status in both countries, Privacy, security, and patient access laws, technical standards and achieving interoperability between EHR vendors; access to capital; and investment in consumer/wellness apps vs. enterprise/systems level solutions. Additionally, these teams are working closely with the data liberation teams to develop detailed documentation of the open data sets available in both countries; documentation will include not only descriptions of the data, but also details on the potential limitations of the data sets and how they can be used. Like any experiment, this collaborative effort between the US and UK has already had its share of challenges, pivots and exciting breakthroughs, and there are certain to be more along the way. But it is clear that the potential impact and effects of this partnership from a health data and IT, and ultimately health care perspective are promising.
