The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has pledged $90 million to help reduce health disparities with data-driven solutions. Specifically, this pledge will allow health centers to expand analytics and reporting capabilities, eventually enhancing healthcare services and supporting patient-level UDS+ data submissions through the collection of more precise data on health disparities. This interesting topic came to us from Nature in their article, “Harnessing big data for health equity through a comprehensive public database and data collection framework.”

Big data has impacted patient care for decades. It helps health insurance companies incentivize preventative care among patients and physicians, ultimately decreasing the use of costly acute care and improving care equity. Frequently, however, algorithms lack subjective data, and what data they have is only collected periodically. This produces unnecessary lag between the point when systemic health issues arise and the point at which healthcare providers can identify and respond to them.

As big data continues to revolutionize the world, its potential impact on improving health outcomes and disparities cannot be discounted. By first investing in health centers, hospitals, patient-driven reporting, and race- and ethnicity-based data collection and secondly developing minimum standards for the collection of health equity metrics, we can bring greater attention to regional and national healthcare inequities. These measures might then inspire lawmakers to prioritize health equity initiatives within healthcare systems to get a clearer picture of the communities they serve.

Making data accessible is something we know. Whatever the search, it is vital to have a comprehensive search feature and quality indexing against a standards-based taxonomy. Choose the right partner in technology, especially when your content is in their hands. Access Innovations is known as a leader in database production, standards development, and creating and applying taxonomies.

Melody K. Smith

Data Harmony is an award-winning semantic suite that leverages explainable AI.

Sponsored by Access Innovations, changing search to found.