The Road to Real Personalized Health is Through Data

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 has a huge impact on my life, but I don’t have the ability to personalize my healthcare experience, personalize my medical treatments, or personalize how I’m treated as I move through the system.

What’s the missing piece? Data. We need to break data out of silos, exchange it, share it, leverage it, use it — all types of data — claims, clinical, new, and old. We can’t build personalized health without piecing together each patient’s individual experience to tell the full story. We cannot leverage the positive power of technology, including machine learning and AI, without data. Unlocking this information is difficult. But it’s critical work. And we need to democratize access to data, not treat it like a competitive asset, to bring the power of personalized medicine to every clinician and patient.

Read full article by Claudia Williams, CEO, Manifest MedEx, published in Electronic Health Reporter.