Clinical Data is a Resource Waiting to be Tapped

We are experiencing a digital revolution in healthcare. With the explosion of information collected in every facet of our lives, data is the fuel of the 21st century. Our daily lives generate millions of data points—from our electronic health records (EHRs) and genetic sequences and even the number of steps we take each day. These discrete moments can be stitched together to power artificial intelligence algorithms, inform medical decisions at the point of care, influence patient behavior, drive better outcomes, and predict and mitigate disease progression.

Useable clinical data is a tremendous resource capable of advancing healthcare’s digital revolution. However, the industry at large continues to be challenged by effectively accessing, aggregating, and deploying clinical data at scale.

What is the potential of clinical data, and how can its full potential be unlocked to be more effectively leveraged as an asset?

Clinical data sourced from EHRs, labs, and other information systems contain rich details on an individual’s health journey—including real-time vital signs, test results, diagnoses, immunizations, and more—that are not present in other data sources. When doctors, underwriters, medical reviewers, and care coordinators get a complete picture of a person’s health at the point of care, they make better decisions. Moreover, when patients have access to this data, it encourages active participation, improves health literacy, and empowers them to make informed care decisions. 

Better decisions and increased patient empowerment mean reduced costs, less exposure to financial risk, improved clinical outcomes, and better consumer experience. Putting the insights found in clinical data to work has the potential to keep us healthier and make the business of healthcare more efficient, less wasteful, and less costly. But doing so is easier said than done. Today, it is a substantial challenge and investment to acquire, store, transform, and standardize clinical data at scale to tap into its potential.

Here’s the reality: clinical data in its raw, native form is not ready for prime time for several reasons:

• Competing standards (local versus proprietary versus national versus international; FHIR versus C-CDA).
• Inconsistencies in how we document information in EHR systems and labs.
• Challenges to data collection at the point of care leading to data gaps.
• Data fragmentation (the average Medicare patient sees 11 providers across 5 sites of care, and no one is privy to the whole story)¹.

You can overcome the challenges around data inconsistencies and fragmentation with Availity Fusion’s proven real-time automated data transformation technology. By integrating data from a range of sources, including EHRs, health plans, aggregators and health information exchanges, health plans, providers, health systems, labs, and more, Availity Fusion creates a consistent and structured data asset in real-time, increasing the accessibility and usefulness of clinical data. We are partnering with leading health solution vendors, national payers, HIEs, government entities, and life insurers to turn their clinical data into a deployable and scalable enterprise asset.

Read our Insight Brief “The Potential of Clinical Data” to learn more about the potential of clinical data to drive significant change in the healthcare industry, the inherent challenges to effectively leveraging clinical data, and the power of upcycling clinical data to unlock and drive insight generation at scale.