Experts Urge Faster Movement on Health Care Data (U.S. News & World Report)

Friday Apr 27th, 2018

HEALTH PROFESSIONALS shouldn't wait for the perfect data to come along before planning interventions to improve population health, experts say, because there is no perfect data.

Digital health and big data are frequently cited as the next frontiers of health care, with a seemingly never-ending rotation of new products and artificial intelligence tools cropping up to revolutionize health care.

But in a discussion Friday at the Health Datapalooza conference in the nation's capital, panelists emphasized that health systems should use data to chase solutions to community health problems, rather than just collecting data for data's sake – and that they'd better do it fast.

"I have some issues with data," Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leana Wen said during the panel Friday. "I actually think we spend a lot of time looking at data and admiring a problem. And I'm all for studying a problem, but I think we also need to immediately take action as a result of it."

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When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

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