A Blueprint for Using Data to Improve Health
By Brian Beaty, April 6, 2015
An explosion of self-monitoring devices and apps that passively track every move and breath we take has brought about an unparalleled opportunity to harness data to improve health. But according to a new report, the public’s concerns about privacy and other barriers to data sharing could halt progress.
On April 2, an independent advisory committee, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, released a report – Data for Health, Learning What Works – an overview of the hopes, fears, and ideas that communities shared during “listening sessions” in five cities across the country last fall. At these events, communities shared concerns about data privacy and security, the need to communicate the significant public health benefits of capturing and sharing health data, and the importance of building up community infrastructures.
In the new report, the Data for Health Advisory Committee also offered 13 recommendations for how to move forward, including strengthening and modernizing U.S. privacy policies and launching a pilot Code for America data analytics program that promotes greater transparency in public health data.
Committee members presented the report findings at a launch event last Thursday at Union Station in Washington, D.C., where speakers included Karen DeSalvo, national coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and Stephen Friend, co-founder of Sage Bionetworks, the company that created two of Apple’s five ResearchKit apps.
Read more about the report and Data for Health initiative in this FierceHealthIT story and ONC’s Health IT Buzz post. Or visit the Data for Health page on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s website.
