White House asks providers for feedback on PMI
As electronic health records become tools that are almost necessary for enhanced patient care, the health care industry has started to push for improved interoperability between providers in different care settings. However, this has proved challenging, while other aspects like security are vulnerable as patient data becomes more transferable. The sector is currently trying to balance safety with the ability to send data between patients' different providers when necessary.
The Precision Medicine Initiative works to ensure that patient data is secure while simultaneously becoming usable for health information exchange between all aspects of the industry, from patients and their providers to researchers.
White House asks for feedback on the PMI
The White House recently started asking for responses from health professionals throughout both the private and public sectors in regard to feedback on the PMI. PMI Project Manager Stephanie Devaney and Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist in the Office of Science and Technology Policy DJ Patil expressed in the official blog of the Executive Branch the importance of feedback from industry stakeholders in order to enhance personalized medicine. Without the input from these key players, the PMI is not likely to successfully move forward.
"With support from patients, research participants, researchers, providers, and private sector innovators, we can make precision medicine a reality," explained Patil and Devaney. "We need your creativity, on-the-ground experience, and enthusiasm to realize the promise of delivering individually tailored treatments to patients."
One of the major obstacles in the way of progressing precision medicine that the pair discussed in the blog is the lack of access to important health data as well as liquidity.
"Over the course of this administration, we've seen incredible advances in health technology, including widespread adoption of electronic health records," they noted. "Yet, there is still more work to do. Too many people are unable to access, share, or move their health data easily."
How can the industry improve health information exchange?
Patil and Devaney noted a few ways that the health care sector can work toward improved health information exchange. They stressed that a consortium of individuals needs to work together to execute the strategies that will make these improvements and establish the most effective health IT infrastructure.
Health professionals in all sectors must combine their efforts and actively engage in research, which includes sharing their health data with the appropriate researchers who are working to understand prominent diseases and other health-related mysteries. Translating these findings into better care while maintaining a secure infrastructure that is going to efficiently protect patient privacy is key to ultimately improving the industry's standard of patient care.
As patient engagement and enhanced health information exchange become increasingly important throughout the sector, health professionals are making precision medicine more of a major priority.
"The move by the current administration to expand its collection of input to include both the private and public sector should help complete the picture that will become a learning health system and with it precision medicine," explained Kyle Murphy, Ph.D., contributor to EHRIntelligence.
Patients are actively trying to become more involved in their own health through features like patient portals provided by their physicians' EHR systems. The ability to exchange this data between providers is essential to ensuring that this remains possible and that patients have greater access to their health.
Many EHR vendors have implemented features like mobile applications to make sure that both providers and patients are able to access essential health data no matter where they are to customize care delivery for patients – an essential aspect to moving precision medicine forward.
