Tech Giants Pledge to Ease Patient, Provider Access to Health Data -- Update
August 13 2018 - 5:56PM
Dow Jones News
By John D. McKinnon
WASHINGTON -- Major tech companies committed Monday to removing
technological barriers that have hindered patient and provider
access to health-care data online.
At a Trump administration event focused on developing more
health-care apps, companies including Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet
Inc. unit Google and Microsoft Corp. said they would "share the
common quest to unlock the potential in health care data, to
deliver better outcomes at lower costs."
That promise would help accelerate what many regard as a coming
data-driven revolution in health care, as patients, providers and
researchers gain more access to records. It could help the
development of more calibrated and cost-effective treatments.
Improving communications and data exchanges among health
information-technology systems and devices could lead to more than
$30 billion a year in savings, according to some estimates. The
U.S. has recently spent 17.9% of gross domestic product on health
care -- and that share has been rising.
The Trump administration sees better use of health-care data as
a key to unlocking savings and holding down costs while improving
outcomes. "We want to lean into technology and use it as a potent
force to create more efficiencies in our system," said Seema Verma,
the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services. She described improving interoperability as a centerpiece
of that strategy.
Big tech firms also stand to benefit from the new uses of health
data.
In the past, even when providers switched from paper records,
many types of electronic data -- including basic patient
information, images and lab results -- have remain locked in
digital silos that aren't readily accessible.
"Even though that information is now digitized, it's held in
many different formats and standards, such that the patient can't
control that data, or move it seamlessly from one practice to the
next," said Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology
Industry Council, a trade group, speaking generally about health
data. "It can't flow fluidly."
Federal privacy laws and regulations also have been blamed for
some of the problems.
As a result, health care has lagged behind many other industries
in consolidating and tapping data.
Under pressure to reduce costs and improve outcomes, providers
and policy makers are focused on developing interoperable systems
that can make better use of available data. Such systems could, for
example, be able to tell physicians when a test would be
duplicative, or warn patients when they are taking prescription
drugs that could have harmful interactions.
The trend is being accelerated by big tech companies that see
major opportunities, such as new uses for their cloud and
artificial-intelligence capabilities. Apple Inc., for example, has
already been active in the area, taking steps to help customers
monitor their biometric data as well as other health data.
"As patient expectations for seamless experiences have
increased, so has our commitment to eliminating the technological
barriers that make it challenging for providers to deliver
connected care," Google said in a blog post Monday.
"This is about cloud infrastructure and platforms, building
tools and leveraging" data analytics, Gregory Moore, Google's vice
president of health care, said in an interview.
Signers of Monday's commitment also include IBM, Oracle Corp.
and Salesforce.com Inc.
Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 13, 2018 17:41 ET (21:41 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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