Strata Rx 2013: Sivak talks health data liberation

BOSTON—Bryan Sivak, chief technology officer and “entrepreneur in residence” at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told an audience at Strata Rx 2013 that he is on a mission to liberate healthcare data.                           

“Health data is a big part of our future,” he said, calling the Affordable Care Act the biggest transformation in the industry since Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. His work entails disseminating and making available data while continually educating stakeholders about their potential to save money and improve care.  

“For the last three years, we’ve been focusing on liberating every dataset we can find,” he said. In 2010, 30 datasets were made public. Last week, he said the agency reached the milestone of releasing 1,000 datasets.

Sivak cited the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS’) release of data for the most common inpatient and outpatient procedures. “In the first two weeks out there, it was downloaded 200,000 times.”

“It’s not just entrepreneurs, but patients need data too,” he also said, noting that data allow patients to pay attention to their health even when they are not sick. The Blue Button initiative, which allows patients to view, transmit and download their data, and HIPAA regulations clarifying that patients have a right to a copy of their data both bolster patient access, he said.

Sivak said several HHS initiatives are in the works to make CMS data more accessible and user friendly.

A pilot slated for next year will combine CMS claims data with clinical data. “It has the potential to be really transformative,” he said. Also, HHS is working with care networks to develop a pilot test bed to create new applications working with health data.

Use cases require exploration to push the industry forward, he said. For example, more should be done to enable patients to access and correct errors in their records. Other potential use cases include electronic vaccination records, which he said affects nearly everyone with children going to school, and initiatives to help patients understand their claims data in a better way.

“There are millions more,” he said of possible use cases.

For now, Sivak said he is searching for innovators and disrupters to get involved in transforming the industry. The agency is holding developer meetings throughout the country to connect them with Blue Button in the hope of spurring the development of more Blue Button-enabled consumer apps.

“Every day I see an example of something that needs to be disrupted. Let’s change it, let’s go,” he said.