Healthcare data exchange is due for a major change. And no, this one doesn’t stem from COVID-19.   For some time now, health IT teams from across the industry have been busy preparing for the ONC and CMS interoperability rules to go into effect, which is set for early 2021. The regulations will require payers to provide patients with reliable access to provider directories, control over their health data, and the ability to transfer that information to new payers.   But is simply meeting the mandate enough?   Not if you ask Michael Della Villa, the chief information officer and head of shared services for MVP Health Care, a New York-based health plan that serves 700,000 members. On this episode of Healthy Data, a podcast series by InterSystems, we speak with Michael, who describes the steps his organization has taken to build a data strategy that both satisfies the interoperability rules and cements new benefits for members. The goal is simple enough: empower patients to make the right decisions, receive high-quality care, and achieve the best outcomes.   Here are some important takeaways from our discussion.   ·      Data is the lifeblood of any organization, whether you’re in healthcare, finance, or manufacturing. ·      While all healthcare stakeholders must meet their obligations set forth in the new interoperability rules, payers that exceed expectations surrounding clinical data will position their stakeholders to reap bigger benefits. ·      When a new challenge arises, there’s no sense in doing things the same way you always have.   Clinical data is critical to MVP Health Care’s approach to interoperability. The organization believes its efforts stand to enhance quality reporting, provider network engagement, risk adjustment, and more. And by creating a 360-degree view of each member, MVP Health Care plans to help them optimize their decision-making.   Because as healthcare data sharing evolves, doing just enough to get by is no longer enough.   So, join us and Michael on today’s episode of Healthy Data to learn how you can not only satisfy the mandate, but also ensure better care for your members when they need it most. Learn how InterSystems can help you achieve healthy data today (https://www.intersystems.com/healthy-data/) .

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7: Level Up: How to Exceed Interoperability Expectations – Michael Della Villa

It’s nearly impossible to determine the amount of valuable data that healthcare’s many stakeholders are sitting on, unaware of how to make it accessible and actionable. That’s the task of healthcare technology leaders: identifying and freeing data, one project at a time. But, as UC Davis Health’s Michael B. Marchant can attest, overcoming that challenge is worth every bit of effort.   As the organization’s director of health information exchange and system integration, he was charged with streamlining how physicians access genomic data reports, which provide detailed insights that enable better care decisions for patients with cancer and other complex conditions. After much thought, Marchant and his team decided that the best course of action was to link genomic data reporting to the electronic health record (EHR) system, in a searchable format. If this information lived in patient charts, it could unlock a greater level of personalized medicine.   For this episode of Healthy Data, a podcast series by InterSystems, we spoke with Marchant to learn how UC Davis Health executed this vision, why the initiative matters, and its implications for the future. Here are a few high-impact takeaways:   ·      Seamless data exchange enables doctors to access critical insights without leaving the EHR. That has eliminated the burden of hunting down clunky records, meaning physicians more likely to find and use genomic data reports. ·      By linking the EHR to a clinical trials database, technology empowers physicians to connect patients to innovative care, depending on their specific needs. ·      Timely genomic data reporting, bolstered by notifications, means stronger, more personalized care.   When we spoke with Marchant, the coronavirus pandemic was only beginning its devastating march through U.S. hospitals. Since then, he and his team have raced to support UC Davis Health’s expanded telemedicine efforts, 5,000 staff members who began working remotely, and more than 100 technology changes required to enable COVID-19 screening, treatment, and reporting.   Despite their rapid-fire response to the crisis of our time, Marchant and his colleagues have continued to steer quicker and more accessible genomic data reporting across the organization. Today on Healthy Data, we cover their innovative approach—and what the rest of us can learn. Learn how InterSystems can help you achieve healthy data today (https://www.intersystems.com/healthy-data/) .

6: Michael B. Marchant: Revolutionizing Genomic Data Reporting

Have you ever bumped into the same obstacle—maybe a sharp edge or a rise in the floor—over and over again? That’s precisely what life sciences organizations have done for years when it comes to how they use data. But instead of walking away with a stubbed toe or a headache, this persistent challenge forces pharmaceutical companies to burn more time and resources to get drugs to market. Patients, meanwhile, miss out on potentially life-saving treatments.   Take it from Matthew Stannard, life sciences advisor to InterSystems. After 20 years in all corners of the life sciences space, he understands the challenges and opportunities facing drug makers. This week on Healthy Data, a podcast series by InterSystems, we speak with Matt to learn more about how life sciences organizations can leverage data, analytics, and artificial intelligence to improve their operations.   Here are a few key points from the conversation.   ·      Clinical trials are facing a classic case of “two ships passing in the night.” Life sciences stakeholders can’t find participants to meet enrollment goals, even as they overlook patients who need the drug in question. ·      Disparate data silos are, at least in part, to blame. Access to data from many electronic health records, retrospectively and in real time, and real-world evidence can help solve life sciences’ data challenges. ·      The benefits of embracing data and technology are clear: Patients survive, and life sciences companies thrive. It’s all thanks to access and efficiency.   And COVID-19 has only exacerbated efforts to connect patients with clinical trials, Matt notes. The pandemic has disrupted operations within hospitals and life sciences organizations, leaving a major backlog that threatens further delays for critical drugs.    If the need for life sciences to get creative with data was urgent before, it’s essential now. But the good news is that despite decades of data hardship, drug manufacturers have the ability to embrace tools that could usher in a new age of life sciences innovation.   Take the first step on that journey with Matt and us today on Healthy Data, a podcast series by InterSystems. Learn how InterSystems can help you achieve healthy data today (https://www.intersystems.com/healthy-data/) .

5: Matthew Stannard: How Life Sciences Organizations Can Solve the Data Problem

Volatility has become the standard in stock markets across the world over the past several months. Ever since COVID-19 fired off an economic recession, capital markets firms have fought to stabilize their operations. But one key to success amid explosive markets lies within each organization: data.   This week on Healthy Data, we host a discussion on the need for speed and scale in the financial services sector, with its ever-rising number of transactions. Our guests are Joe Lichtenberg, director of product and industry marketing for InterSystems, and Larry Tabb, founder and research chairman of the research and consulting firm the Tabb Group. Together, they examine how capital markets—and banks’ customers—can benefit from healthy data, now and long into the future.   This conversation occurred prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but its insights remain critical. Tabb and Lichtenberg, for instance, discuss trends among the world’s top banks, who are racing to implement high-performance data technologies—without the drawbacks of in-memory databases. Multi-level architectures that require banks to stitch together a database and a data grid or data fabric simply won’t cut it. Integration and consistency are key. Losing data is, of course, detrimental to the success of any bank. Lichtenberg and Tabb go on to analyze the trend toward built-in persistence and enterprise-wide data fabrics, with guaranteed consistency.   When banks pin down their strategy to achieve and leverage healthy data, anything is possible. They can implement real-time advanced analytics, unlock efficiencies in the front and middle offices, and execute a successful algorithmic trading program. The benefits of a data-driven future for capital markets are limitless.   But the first step is, as always, data that flows seamlessly and is ready for action.   So, tune in and let us know your thoughts. How is your bank using data to stay ahead of the curve? And where can you improve?   To learn how InterSystems can help you achieve healthy data today, click here (https://www.intersystems.com/healthy-data/) .

4: Joe Lichtenberg and Larry Tabb: How Data Bolsters the World's Top Banks

Why have so many data-sharing efforts excluded mental health data when the disconnect risks patient safety and promotes inefficiencies? The answer could be as simple as this: Mental health data is difficult to collect, standardize, and analyze. But should that notion preclude us from taking the first step toward making it happen, however difficult it may be? Dr. James Reed didn’t think so, so he took action. As a psychiatrist and chief clinical information officer for the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Reed helped launch an innovative network charged with uniting mental health data from four neighboring trusts in the United Kingdom. The organization—MERIT, or the Mental Health Alliance for Excellence, Resilience, Innovation and Training—has since optimized and improved care delivery, eliminated duplicative processes, and earned buy-in from above and below. On this episode of Healthy Data, we speak with Reed to better understand how sharing mental health data has transformed care in one area and what that could mean for the healthcare industry at large. Keep in mind that we spoke with Reed before the coronavirus pandemic began its spread. Since then, however, the work of MERIT has remained important amid rising concerns about mental health stemming from social isolation and pandemic-induced panic. The data connections described in this episode, it turns out, might be more critical now than ever before. Learn how InterSystems can help you achieve healthy data today (https://www.intersystems.com/healthy-data/) .

3: James Reed: Moving Toward Meaningful Mental Health Data

Value-based care and strong population health programs require a robust combination of claims and clinical data. But healthcare providers and insurers often lack at least one side of the equation.   That’s where Jason Buckner comes in. He’s the technology chief operating officer for Manifest MedEx (https://www.manifestmedex.org/) , California’s nonprofit health data network. The organization teams up with more than 400 healthcare organizations, including 100-plus hospitals and seven health plans, across the Golden State. Manifest MedEx shares records for 20 million Californians and brings formidable tools such as real-time alerts and access to clinical and claims data to its participants.   The success here—the jewel—is how it meshes claims and clinical data and then makes that actionable for members. But Manifest MedEx has also begun incorporating predictive analytics into its game. That’s empowering providers to step in before a health crisis occurs.   In this episode of Healthy Data, a podcast series by InterSystems, we examine the inspiring data work of Manifest MedEx with Jason Buckner and how other organizations can follow its lead.   We spoke with Buckner a few months before the coronavirus pandemic struck, but his insights have only become more relevant. Manifest MedEx has been working with public health departments and officials to identify at-risk populations and monitor trends in healthcare utilization. It’s all about keeping a pulse on hospital and health system capacity—because pandemic or not, the smart use of data and predictive analytics is critical to all of our health.

2: Jason Buckner: Unifying Claims and Clinical Data

As the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold of the world, much of the conversation understandably focused on federal and state responses. For most people, the role of health information technology remained hidden behind staggering infection rates and death tolls. But interoperability, it turns out, proved to be critical in coordinating the public health response.   We spoke with Jay Nakashima, executive director of eHealth Exchange (https://ehealthexchange.org/) , to learn how his organization retooled its focus to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. What we found was noteworthy in several ways:   ·      The health information network connected healthcare provider organizations to public health agencies in a seamless manner that supported a stronger response than would have otherwise been obtainable. ·      The eHealth Exchange launched initiatives that enabled healthcare organizations, physicians, and patients to regain some sense of agency at a time when almost everything seemed out of their control. ·      Interoperability emerged as important in a time of pandemic as it is in times of peace.   But how did the eHealth Exchange, whose data network connects federal and non-federal organizations, wage its coronavirus response campaign? In this episode of InterSystems Healthy Data, Nakashima discusses electronic case reporting, advance care plans and directives, and new take on the Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies, better known as PULSE.   Of course, the United States and other nations still have work to do to achieve seamless, comprehensive interoperability. Nakashima also weighs in on how healthcare and technology leaders can advance the cause and why they must, even after COVID-19 enters the history books. 

1: Jay Nakashima: Interoperability's Role in Fighting the Pandemic

Across healthcare, access to data is increasing exponentially and bringing new opportunities for stakeholders throughout the industry. But it’s important to understand that when it comes to data, availability is not quite as important as usefulness. As the coronavirus pandemic tightens economic activity and strains hospitals in many countries, actionable data holds promise to reduce the impact. We spoke with Don Woodlock, head of the HealthShare business unit at InterSystems, before COVID-19 emerged, but his insights into data’s role in improving the healthcare system have only grown more important. Healthcare is seeing a shift toward so-called “clean data,” which is more useful in helping generate effective insight, Woodlock says. Late last year, he caught up with InterSystems organization’s partners, including health systems, health information exchanges (HIE) and payer organizations, to understand their approaches. Across that spectrum, capturing clean data was a critical mission objective. So here’s the big question: how do these forward-thinking organizations plan to achieve that goal? In this episode of InterSystems PULSEcast, Woodlock spotlights the answers and examines how critical healthcare change-makers like health systems, HIEs and payers are fitting data into forms that are helpful to doctors, data analysts and other key players. He also explores the opportunities inherent in following the clean data trend, and how enterprising organizations can prepare to act upon the insights that are sure to follow.

9: Don Woodlock: Capturing Cleaner Data Across the Care Continuum

At the heart of nearly every health IT project is the patient, and that’s where Lygeia Ricciardi’s heart is, too. As Chief Transformation Officer of the digital health startup Carium and a former leader at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), Ricciardi brings a deep understanding of patient needs, which can get lost in the shuffle—especially as the healthcare industry grows more complex each day. Ricciardi’s experience has also helped her understand that increasing complexity means healthcare organizations and developers face new challenges in building apps that resonate with and serve their patient population’s best interests. What’s really missing from those apps today? Empathy and connection, Ricciardi says. There are tons of great apps that help patients accomplish practical feats like counting calories. But a real sense of connection and support for these patients’ underlying motivations—like getting to a healthy weight or improving their diabetes, for example—should be a key focus for health system leaders and developers as they kickoff new projects. Tune into this episode of InterSystems PULSEcast to learn how to measure and meet patient needs, overcome the cultural, financial and privacy challenges that stand between you and your next successful app, and direct your assets and resources appropriately to ensure you’re putting forth your best effort to engage your patient population with human-centered design.

8: Lygeia Ricciardi: Prioritizing Patient-Centered Design

Jeff Fried is passionate about helping people create data-driven applications that empower their decision-making. It’s this very passion that drives Fried, director of product management at InterSystems and a self-proclaimed data management nerd, to encourage the enterprise- level operationalization of data — a process that strictly defines variables into measurable factors. Operationalization defines fuzzy concepts (of which there are many in the tip-of-the-spear world of data analytics) and allows them to be measured empirically and quantitatively. Keep in mind that data operationalization isn’t new and shouldn’t be feared. Industries like banking and retail are long-time beneficiaries of so-called “data opps.” Healthcare, on the other hand, has been slower to the draw. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late. In fact, in an industry where data operationalization isn’t yet widespread, those who take action now stand to gain solid footing on which to better serve their patient populations and serious competitive advantage. What exactly are those advantages? Tune in to this episode of InterSystems PULSEcast to find out. Along the way, Fried will help you discover how to put pragmatic plans in place that smooth operations and bring direct business benefit to your organization through data operationalization.

7: Jeff Fried: A Deep Dive on Data Operationalization

In healthcare IT, data silos are well-known foes. Talk of “breaking them down” permeates most health IT conferences, and for good reason: These silos stand between our present reality and the future promise of more informed, efficient, and personalized healthcare delivery. But there is a lesser-known type of silo that, until recently, has largely crept below the radar—the silo that isolates a patient’s desire to have a say in their care journey from their physician’s determination of what’s best for that patient. Often these two forces don’t align. At worst, they completely neglect to take one another into account. The drive to break down this silo and embed consent, connectivity and clinical context into the patient-physician relationship is at the core of Coordinate My Care, a UK-based service that’s part of the National Health Service’s (NHS) Innovation Accelerator program. The service helps inform physicians of their patients’ desires, so they can make bespoke treatment recommendations that honor each patient's self-sovereignty. In this episode of InterSystems PULSEcast, we speak with Professor Julia Riley, consultant in palliative medicine and clinical lead for Coordinate My Care, to discover why connected patient plans are such an urgent need, how to bring them to life while minimizing cultural pushback, and how the patient-physician relationship stands to benefit.

6: Julia Riley: Breaking Down the Patient-Physician Divide

Jim Collins uses artificial intelligence (AI) to explore beyond the limits of what was once thought possible. The former Rhodes Scholar and MacArthur Fellow (or MacArthur Genius, as you may know it) runs a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) lab whose goal is to combat increasing antibiotic resistance through new drug discovery. His work in synthetic biology, meanwhile, focuses on rewiring tiny organisms so that they can identify and even help treat infection. It’s all possible only because of AI, which Collins leverages to analyze the billions of data points required to push these boundaries. But Collins knows that AI is not magical, nor is it a silver bullet. Beyond the hype we can see that it’s no more or less than a high-tech tool. As such, it takes time, expertise and smart partnerships to integrate into a business and realize its potential. In this episode, Collins details the evolution of AI in healthcare and how the technology could advance biomedicine, as well as how those looking to leverage AI in healthcare can avoid common pitfalls, forge the right partnerships and take a thoughtful approach to implementation.

5: Jim Collins: An Authentic Approach to Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

Google Maps is useful because it’s driven by an incredible trove of quality data that empowers us to see the world from different perspectives—a humble orb floating across the galaxy or a sandwich shop down the street.  What if healthcare had such a trove of data? Clean data that, instead of being holed up in silos, flowed like a river across the industry? Many experts believe that if this was the case, we could zoom out to build big-picture maps of chronic disease hotspots (and more efficiently conduct the work needed to curtail such problems) and zoom in to the individual patient, who could benefit from our improved understanding of family history, social determinants of health and other distinct factors. Is this an idealistic, far-fetched idea? Not quite. Dozens of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) across the country are working toward this noble goal right now. Angie Bass, president and CEO of the Missouri Health Connection, a midwestern HIE, is looking to leverage the data in her network to help her partners provide better care.  Tune into this episode to learn more about the strategies Bass uses to manage the constant evolution HIEs must endure, what specific steps she plans to take to achieve her lofty goals, and how she ensures her network harnesses the cleanest data available as a fuel source to propel the healthcare industry forward.

4: Angie Bass: Unlocking the Potential Power of Clean Data

Data is everywhere and capturing it has never been simpler or more cost-effective. But as data collection becomes more widely accessible, the process of parsing it into actionable insights represents a distinct challenge—and a huge opportunity. In this episode of InterSystems PULSEcast, David Menninger, an analyst at Ventana Research who has led data projects for more than 25 years, unveils best practices for harnessing the power of real-time data, IoT, artificial intelligence and more. Tune in to join the journey from data collection to extracted insights and everything between. 

3: David Menninger: Discovering the Hidden Dollars Within Your Data

Decentralization means healthcare is changing in an unprecedented way—it’s moving outside the hospital walls. Tune into this episode of InterSystems PULSEcast to hear Kathleen Aller, head of healthcare market strategy at InterSystems, discuss the ideas behind the decentralization of care, explore what it means for enterprising healthcare organizations, and spotlight strategies that can help you use this incredible moment to your advantage. 

2: Kathleen Aller: Demystifying the Decentralization of Care

With great data comes great opportunity. That’s why InterSystems has partnered with the Data Book podcast to bring you an all-new auditory experience called InterSystems PulseCast, a podcast that helps executives and developers explore what’s possible and find the fastest path to get there. Listeners will learn how to implement proven strategies for breaking down data silos, unifying data from disparate sources and following in the footsteps of cross-industry experts who have reaped all the rewards clean data has to offer. Move your business forward and find the fastest path to possible with InterSystems PulseCast.

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