Think about how you’d describe yourself to someone in a couple of sentences. I’m a 40-something person who works with data and analytics. I love swimming, a big bowl of mac and cheese, and I sing along with Bad Romance if it comes on the radio. If you knew me from work, you’d know the first two. If you know me casually in my personal life, you’d know the first and might know the second and third. You’d have to know me really well to know that last one.
Data builds a picture
We’re made up of slivers of information that we acquire about each other depending on the context of our relationship. The better you know someone, the more complete a picture you have. It’s the same with data. The more we have, the more we know – if you know what to do with it.
From medical and pharmacy claims, we can see that someone is seeing a health care provider, what kind of provider they are and whether they ordered any follow-up care or a prescription. From lab results and biometric data, we can get an idea of what kind of health risks might exist. From health assessment input, we learn about a person’s habits and how they perceive their health.
Turn data into action
It doesn’t matter that you can take in data if you’re not doing anything with it. We built our CareEngine® technology to do both. It ingests data from a myriad of sources and compiles it, analyzing it against thousands of evidence-based clinical rules until it has a full picture of a person. We call that the member’s health state and it lets us see everything that’s going on with someone clinically.
Data and analytics can help us understand what a person is doing right for their health as well as where they need support. Marie has diabetes. She is also seeing a health care provider regularly, taking a statin as prescribed and having annual eye and foot exams. But Marie skipped her annual kidney screening. All of this creates a picture of a person with well-managed diabetes at low risk for complications. She could still use a nudge from us because there’s a gap in her care.
See the same person from different angles
The member’s health state exists outside the boundaries of any program they’re enrolled in. We use it to identify programs the member may find valuable and to help clinicians understand what support the member needs. As the member engages with the program, their health state updates with new information that’s readily available to clinicians in other programs. Advances in electronic health record technology make it possible for us to share this updated information with the member’s health care providers at the point of care.
Expect an integrated experience
It’s possible to integrate data and to then use it deliberately and intentionally to improve health outcomes for ActiveHealth members. Once you fully understand the potential, it’s difficult to settle for less. Not just from our well-being solutions, but from our health care providers as well. As consumers of health care, we should all be asking our health care providers what they’re doing to assemble the slivers of our health care data and put it to use to improve health outcomes.