Build a learning health systemFostering a culture of improvement
Sustaining the digital transformation
Sustaining the digital transformation is a challenge for many health systems primarily because of a weak commitment to digital adoption and a weak culture of improvement. These obstacles can be overcome through the creation of a learning health system.
Such a system should include:
- data and technology that is easy to use and frees up the time of caregivers
- an organization committed to the transformation, and
- rigorous measurement and dissemination of patient outcomes.
Measuring outcomes is the basis for course correction and makes it possible to scale the right measures toward continually optimizing, expanding and advancing enterprise performance.
What is a learning health system?
We define a learning healthcare system, as a healthcare system that performs interventions, measures outcomes and course-corrects based on the evaluation of outcomes.
It creates iterative improvement and benefits, as well as is responsive to changes in underlying conditions or assumptions.
A learning health system leverages four key domains to foster a culture of improvement:
1) Data and Technology:
- Automate routine care tasks and enable team-based care.
- Add decision support tools for clinical, operational, and consumer decisions, enabled by AI and predictive analytics (link VE2).
- Ensure this technology is easy to use and access. User-friendly tools will accelerate the uptake speed-up transition to a learning health system.
2) Organizational structures:
Implement the necessary organizational structure to create a cultural change and support the “learning health system” vision:
- Create accountability within the administration, aligned with organizational goals.
- Establish a value realization office to handle change management via education
- Measure the effectiveness of learning efforts.
3) Patient Outcomes Measurements:
The more complete the patient data available the more accurate the outcomes measurements will be.
- Leverage all the available data sources, Patient Reported Outcome Measures, social determinants, and patient preferences.
- Create transparency and accessibility of patient outcomes across the organization.
4) Correction and scale
Adjust course based on new information:
- on the individual level through shared decision-making with patients and their families
- on the institutional level through an enterprise learning system, keeping the staff and administration up to speed on the latest information and technology.
Read the case study: Outside the hospital: cancer monitoring with apps.
Cancer monitoring apps support the documentation of patient reported outcomes and the potential they have to improve personalized care - and perhaps even cancer survival rates. This case study investigates regulatory and organizational challenges when implementing digital apps and increasing their utilization acceptance.