Data liberation an ONC focus moving forward

Patients for far too long have been left out of the healthcare loop. The Office of the National Coordinator is trying to change that through not just Meaningful Use regulations, but also by working to build a coalition of stakeholders better equipped to engage patients, according to the speakers of a Jan. 17 webinar hosted by the National eHealth Collaborative.

“ONC is working toward engaging consumers as partners in health,” said Lygeia Ricciardi, acting director of the office of consumer e-health at the ONC.  “That’s increasingly becoming a cross-agency and public-private effort. The underlying theory here is that patients aren’t merely recipients of healthcare, they’re an untapped, under-utilized resources.”

An American Association of Retired Persons survey of patients over 50 found that those more engaged with their health were less likely to be rehospitalized or to experience a medical error. If more patients were engaged about their care decisions, whether regarding diet or a treatment option, that could have a positive effect on healthcare spending and quality indicators, according to Ricciardi. “For all of these reasons, ONC has baked in and is increasingly integrating the idea of patient engagement into its plans to modernize healthcare with technology in general.”

Stakeholders are beginning to engage patients more fervently and technology is facilitating the process. Policy changes making costs more transparent to consumers and requiring providers to engage patients are beginning to take hold. As they do, business opportunities are arising, according to Ricciardi. Mobile device usage is increasing and project to continue growing through the next decade, and data collected by investment firm Rock Health show a significant increase from 2011 to 2012 in investment dollars funnelled to digital health projects.

The Blue Button initiative is one example of a multi-agency effort to make it possible to engage patients by sharing their health information. The open-source tool allows developers to build applications that can enhance its functionalities. ONC enables this by offering a technical implementation guide, a workflow guide, policy guidance and an adoption plan. It has also offered awards to developers for building apps, such as one that allows users a longitudinal, color-coded view of health information from multiple providers over customizable timeframes.

The ONC’s efforts have led to more than 450 organizations, including vendors, payers and providers, to sign up for the Blue Button pledge, a pledge to make patient data more available to patients. “ONC views itself not as the leader per se in this movement, but as a catalyst,” Ricciardi said. “We’re in a position to learn from the outside world and pull stakeholders together in synergistic ways to help us all move forward to a more participatory healthcare system.”

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