How Can Technology Improve Population Health?
Health IT Outcomes October 22, 2019
Population health traditionally has focused on things like hospitalization rates, epidemiological surveillance and aggregate trends across groups of people, regions, etc., rather than just focusing on an individual person. While important perspectives, these data trends can be too narrow, emphasizing only symptoms, problems and pathology.
As healthcare breaks down silos between specialties (particularly traditional physical medicine and behavioral health), health systems are also recognizing that non-health services (e.g., social services, housing, education, child welfare, criminal justice) are also critical to true whole person population health. Our communities need a more complete, accurate picture of need and a clear view of the impact of multi-system services.
Advances in technology, especially advanced analytics, allow us to tap into a wider range of...