I’ve written numerous times about the potential for health data to be better used than it is today.  It’s not something that happens in terms of improving direct patient care, however, much less used across the wider healthcare ecosystem to use aggregate data to provide better preventative healthcare and smarter treatments.  This secondary use of health data is the topic of a recent paper from the Open Data Institute.

“By reusing health data in different ways, we can increase the value of this data and help to enable these improvements,” the authors say. “Clinical data, such as incidences of healthcare and clinical trials data, can be combined with data collected from other sources, such as sickness and insurance claims records, and from devices and wearable technologies.”

Smarter healthcare

Even before the Covid pandemic placed an intense strain on healthcare systems around the world there was a clear need to better optimize processes and enable healthcare providers to do more with extremely limited resources.  This was especially so as most western countries were seeing an aging population with a growing number of chronic conditions.

The pandemic has intensified this situation, however, with healthcare providers facing an exhausted workforce, a backlog of treatments, and stressed public finances in order to pay for it all.  Smarter use of data promises to allow healthcare providers to rethink how they operate and work in a more effective manner.

“This secondary use of health data can enable a wide range of benefits across the entire healthcare system,” the authors write. “These include opportunities to optimize service, reduce health inequalities by better allocating resources, and enhance personalized healthcare – for example, by comparing treatments for people with similar characteristics.”

Secondary data

Health data is broadly defined as any information generated via the various processes that deliver healthcare to people.  It includes clinical trial data, medical records, insurance claims, and disease registries.

The primary use of such data involves using it in the delivery of healthcare.  For instance, it includes the use of data to make key decisions about the care provided to the individual involved in the data.

By contrast, secondary data is the aggregation of these individual datasets into a population-level repository, with the aim being to improve things such as the development of treatments, monitoring of safety, personal care planning, and policymaking.

The paper highlights how reusing data in various ways significantly increases the value of the data and helps to make healthcare much smarter and more efficient.  For instance, data from clinical trials can be used alongside data from other sources, such as wearable devices and apps, to make treatment development more effective.

“An open, trusted data ecosystem for secondary use of health data enables the use and sharing of data, encourages the adoption of personalized healthcare, and increases efficiency and innovation in the health system,” the report says.