By Phil Beckett, CEO at Texas Health Services Authority and Data Usability Workgroup Co-Chair
I am thrilled and excited to join Dr. Bill Gregg as co-chair of The Sequoia Project’s Interoperability Matters Data Usability Workgroup.
My own interoperability and data useability career began in the NICU at a children’s hospital in the 1990s. I was a postdoctoral fellow studying protein metabolism in premature infants. Patient data was in multiple places, not harmonized, not relationally linked, not standardized and mostly interpreted by humans. As a researcher, that was a problem, but working alongside clinicians, it was clear that the usability of data was both a challenge and an opportunity for them too.
I spent the next part of my career learning standards, developing standards with stakeholder groups, writing interfaces, and normalizing data to standard vocabularies, all based on the understanding that usable data is impactful data. I believed that I could have more impact on healthcare by making data usable to others than I could using data alone. Since 2010, I have been part of the health information exchange ecosystem where the promise of shared data improves health outcomes and reduces healthcare costs. That promise can only be realized when data is usable; what I need, where I need it and when I need it. As CEO of C3HIE, I was able to leverage the work of the Data Usability Workgroup to better serve our own participants and took the Taking Root Movement’s Pledge.
I’m now at Texas Health Services Authority, where we have also signed the Taking Root Movement’s Pledge and have a mission to solve interoperability problems at scale, at the state and national level. Our vision is that we solve data useability as far upstream as possible so that every downstream partner benefits. The THSA Interoperability Collaborative brings together stakeholders across Texas to understand the root causes of interoperability problems, to understand what problems are important to our stakeholders, and find common solutions. The collaborative work in Texas is informed by and informs this national Data Usability Workgroup. Together, we have achieved standards for naming newborns so that another facility can easily request the birth records because they know what the infant naming standard is. We have worked on CCDA standards for specific document types, such as a maternal health progress note, so that providers using any electronic health record can see a consistent document content independent of source, speeding care delivery, improving safety. This is just a couple of examples of the prolific output of the Interoperability Matters collaborative.
As co-chair of the Data Usability Workgroup, I hope to bring energy, ideas and encouragement. It is in working together and focusing on solvable problems that we make strides forward in interoperability. Interoperability is not about just moving data, it is about making a positive difference in people’s lives. The priority topics of this group are big, exciting and focus on the future of data useability: Consumer/Patient data access; Quality Measure Reporting; Privacy and Consent; Public Health; Artificial Intelligence.
I look forward to helping to grow this workgroup, and encourage all my colleagues to consider signing the Taking Root Pledge, get involved, and mostly, know that you have the power to make a difference through this Workgroup.
Learn more about the Interoperability Matters Data Usability Workgroup here.
Learn more about the Data Usability Taking Root Movement here.