Over the course of the last two years, health systems have faced unique data sharing and collaboration challenges. With a lack of cross-institutional data sharing, a worldwide pandemic forced healthcare organizations to work together to pool information and knowledge, research and results, best practices and outcomes, to save lives as quickly as possible. This forced collaboration brought to light the need for fast, seamless, secure method for sharing information to solve some of the world’s biggest health problems.
As healthcare organizations look ahead, there are three types of collaboration that should be considered and more broadly explored in 2022.
-
Life Sciences
-
Government Agencies
-
Cross-Institutional – (yes, even your “competitors”)
#1
Life Sciences:
For life science companies, the research and development process for creating new therapies and devices is slow and can be difficult to navigate. With regulations, multiple trial phases, patient and site selection, and market introduction, pharma companies lose revenue and competitive advantage when the process takes too long. These organizations need a more effective way to screen provider sites against study criteria in order to optimize and accelerate site selection as well as a way to access reliable results based on this inclusion/exclusion criteria from real data from the selected site. Being able to identify a reliable site and accelerate the patient selection identification process overcomes one of the biggest hurdles in new drug and therapy creation.
For clinicians, managing patients can also present significant challenges. One recent study found that 63 percent of patients do not take their medication as directed. Patients who fail to comply with a physician’s care plan, including medication dosage, have poorer outcomes, increased emergency room and hospital visits, and large expenses.
Today, healthcare systems are learning that partnering with pharmaceutical companies to share information and achieve similar goals, can lead to decreased readmission rates, overall improved patient outcomes, and accelerated development cycles.
To enable this type of collaboration, life science companies and health systems need a controlled environment to share data – with user controls, privacy protections, and project goals in place.
From within this environment, both organizations can work together efficiently and seamlessly:
-
Access accurate and reliable results, based on real data withoutprivacy risk
-
Drive faster regulatory approval and demonstrate value to payers, providers and patients
-
From any source, users can view a more holistic, evidence-based perspective to design and conduct clinical trials and studies
-
Improve patient engagement and uncover new interventions to increase the likelihood that patients will adhere to their treatment plans
THE WHY: Working together will improve patient outcomes, drive down costs and improve speed to market for new therapies.
#2
Government Agencies:
Historically, health systems and government agencies operated separately and as somewhat independent components of the healthcare system. Due to fundamental changes in healthcare treatment and delivery in recent years including the push to reduce expenses and population health management, a major shift is underway.
Providers, public and private payers, and government agencies are now beginning to understand that communication and data collaboration with each other can achieve multiple goals. They are beginning to look for new ways to improve health for vulnerable populations as well as strengthen communication between public and private sectors of healthcare. From implementing new types of care to identifying best practices to maintaining continuity of care of patients with acute conditions, collaboration is becoming a driving force as these two entities recognize the power of partnership.
Specifically, population health projects can benefit greatly from collaboration.
-
Assess risk and outcomes of a specific population using data collected from health systems
-
Work to find the best care practices to address common problems such as alcoholism, suicide, and heart disease
-
Partner together, in a rapid and secure environment using patient data assets like synthetic data that are accessible without privacy risk
-
Gain insights, broaden population criteria, and collaborate – which has been especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic
When population health is improved, health systems are able to better utilize their resources for different needs. For example, the Indiana State Department of Health, Regenstrief Institute and several other government agencies recently worked together to create a dashboard to help public health officials respond to the pandemic. The dashboard augmented the State’s information by providing data on patients’ course of care through local healthcare systems. Data on hospitalizations and intensive care unit stays gave State leaders a more comprehensive picture of the COVID-19. The partnership made it possible to access data from the majority of Indiana’s health systems and laboratories.
THE WHY: Data access and collaboration allows public health professionals to identify key patterns and predict how to best respond to global pandemics such as COVID-19.
#3
Cross-Institutionally:
For providers, the primary and overarching goal has always been providing the best patient care to drive the most successful outcomes. Critical medical advances are often shared within the medical community. However, health systems are also active competitors – each pursuing their own individual objectives and market share.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals and health systems turned to each other to share insights and information to meet the needs of their patients – everything from visitor restrictions, treatment best practices and vaccination strategies.
In the year ahead, more opportunities exist for health sy
stems to partner with one another, especially in places where patient privacy can be protected. – By pooling resources, talent and information research, quality, and innovation can accelerate forward.
Synthetic data is a powerful tool for health systems to open the door to outside collaboration.
-
Allowing users to combine expertise for specific projects
-
Expanding areas of interest at the click of a button
-
Protecting patient privacy and proprietary information
THE WHY: The collaboration between health systems can push innovation to new heights, expand networks and explore non-traditional partnerships. Most importantly, it can improve patient outcomes. Through one, dynamic platform, all areas of a healthcare system can benefit, from research to operations and quality to innovation and most importantly, to patient care. Unlocking healthcare data will enable exploration, discovery, and drive action to improve care processes, operational performance, gaps and variances in care, revenue opportunities.
Summary
In 2022, we expect to see a growing number of partnerships among these organizations as long as structure, controls, risk-sharing, and additional business arrangements are in place to keep security and privacy are at the forefront of collaboration.
Collaboration using synthetic data allows government agencies, pharma and health systems to work together to explore ideas and find insights that power research, drive better patient outcomes and create impactful healthcare innovation. In order for value-based care to succeed, all stakeholders need to be involved in collaboration are increasingly looking to decrease costs and provide value-based care payment models and in return, outside organizations are willing to offer information and expertise.
MDClone provides a fast, flexible, and controlled environment that allows health systems and third parties to securely work together with freedom and speed.
Unlike traditional analytics platforms, the MDClone ADAMS Platform is the only global, self-service environment that enables a dynamic process for exploration, collaboration and action.
