A group from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has won a national competition for building technologies supporting health information exchange between hospitals and public health agencies, according to a recent press release.
The “Closing the Data Divide” top prize went to the Population Health Risk Assessment Support Engine, which identifies at-risk patient populations and sends clinical decision support to providers.
Developed by Marc Tobias, MD, and Naveen Muthu, MD, both from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, this tool fosters bidirectional data flow between both the providers and public health agencies, helping to build the stores of information regarding public health issues.
Having already been piloted at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, this tool is making great waves in Pennsylvania’s public health sphere.
“Creating a portal where we can securely log in, define a disease, and see how many cases of that disease currently exist in the electronic health records brings the public health community closer to front line providers,” said José Lojo, MPH, an epidemiologist at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. “Down the road, we hope to be able to extract even more specific information from those cases.”
For their part, Tobias and Muthu have received a $30,000 cash prize from the competition, and their system was presented this week at the Practical Playbook National Meeting.
The competition, sponsored by Practical Playbook alongside the de Beaumont Foundation, a support foundation for public health, also recognized second and third prize winners.
Healthstead, the second prize winner, helps connect providers and public health professionals with data regarding neighborhood education, crime level, income, and other relevant factors contributing to patient health.
Healthcare Access San Antonio, the third prize winner, developed HASAFacts, a reporting portal that is built on top of San Antonio’s pre existing health information exchange. The portal takes multiple data sources and compiles it into one, informing providers and public health officials of community health outcomes and alerting them of opportunities for improvement.
According to Practical Playbook officials, the technologies demonstrated by these top three participants are evidence of the innovations within the industry. As healthcare providers and public health experts rely more and more on big data, it is important that they have systems which enable seamless health information exchange.
“All three of the winning teams have provided innovative, adaptable, and clearly applicable technological solutions to the urgent need for better methods for data sharing and exchange,” said Lloyd Michener, MD, principal investigator for the Practical Playbook. “We are honored to have played a role in accelerating progress in this critical area for population health.”
The “Closing the Clinical Divide” competition in and of itself is another positive sign of the industry moving forward with health information exchange. According to leaders from the de Beaumont Foundation, this competition helped introduce industry experts to better methods for handling large amounts of health data.
“In today’s rapidly evolving health care landscape, tools to bridge public health and primary care are more necessary than ever. Through ‘Closing the Data Divide,’ we identified innovative approaches to meet this need and are helping move these innovations into real world practice,” said Edward L. Hunter, President and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation.
The healthcare industry, in its push for better health data interoperability, has hosted several different competitions urging technology developers to create better ways to share information across different technologies.
This past January, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives sponsored a contest for developers to create a feasible and scalable national patient identifier, which would help providers access a patient’s health data regardless of the point of care.
Date: May 24, 2016