Thought Leadership

I was relieved when HIMSS was canceled. We had already made the decision to withdraw to protect our team and so we can focus on continuing to help on the front lines of California healthcare as the statewide health data network. As public health leaders, it is our responsibility to make this kind of difficult…

What do we want from our healthcare system? What do we need from it? And what is the role of technology in helping us feel better? There are so many ways that healthcare technology has advanced to help people live better lives in the last few decades: pacemakers, CT scans, interventional radiology, insulin pumps, digital records, genome…

Anybody who has had a loved one with an acute hospitalization or a chronic illness will have experienced some of the many ways in which healthcare systems fail to live up to the values and ideals of the people who have chosen healthcare as a calling. Healthcare is complicated indeed, but there are rare instances…

“Data is the new oil,” British data scientist Clive Humby once said. “It’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used.” I thought about that line recently when I met with the chief medical officer of a large health system. “I don’t want more data,” she told me, “we are already drowning in it.”…

In the middle of California’s fire season, it’s hard not to think about the role healthcare organizations can and must play when it comes to providing and coordinating care for patients during a natural disaster. These events will become more frequent and intense as the impacts of climate change increase. Natural disasters like the fires…

The path to value-based care is arduous. For health plans, their ability to manage care, assess quality, lower costs, and streamline reporting is directly impacted by access to clinical data. For providers, the same can be said due to their lack of access to claims data. Providers and health plans are increasingly demanding integrated claims…

Robust exchange of health information is absolutely critical to improving health care quality and lowering costs. In the last few months, government leaders at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have advanced ambitious policies to make interoperability a reality. Overall, this is a great thing. However, there are places where DC regulators need help…

On a cold January day high above Rockefeller Plaza a small group of technology pioneers coined the term Blue Button – denoting giving patients easy access to their own electronic health records. It’s a simple and transformative concept, central to our vision of patient-centered healthcare. It was an honor to be there that day. And…

What do we want from our healthcare system? What do we need from it? And what is the role of technology in helping us feel better? There are so many ways that healthcare technology has advanced to help people live better lives in the last few decades: pacemakers, CT scans, interventional radiology, insulin pumps, digital records, genome…

It still seems magical that Spotify creates a personalized music track for my life. Similarly, I now get personalized suggestions of what books to read, what recipes to cook, and even where to travel. This is the way we’re living our lives except for healthcare. It represents almost 20 percent of the U.S. economy and…