The Community Information Exchange: Accelerating Use of Social Determinants of Health

Steve Heard, Chief Innovation Officer at J2 Interactive, presents a strategy in this interview for dealing with new forms of data known as Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) and how traditional HIEs can evolve to help organizations utilize this data.

Heard points out that SDoH has the strongest impacts on people who are poor, isolated, or otherwise marginalized, but that those populations have impacts on the health of everybody else. He therefore urges policy-makers not to “abandon” these people or ignore the needs indicated by the data.

He also talks about funding. SDoH data is spread out among many institutions, such as food banks and homeless shelters, many of which lack IT staffs and collect data on paper forms or simple digital formats such as spreadsheets. To share and make effective use of the SDoH data, these organizations need a Community Information Exchange (CIE).

Heard describes a CIE as more than a hub, but also a framework and “almost a life style.” HIEs, as well-established forums for storing and exchanging data, have the potential to serve as CIEs. The SDoH data is being standardized thanks to the Gravity project at HL7. EHRs are starting to offer fields for the data.

But the data has to be collected and integrated with other systems. Heard describes the process as like CRM. The outreach can be done by health care providers, but often involves other organizations and uses care coordinators.

Heard also distinguishes between data at the individual level (Do you feel safe in your home? Do you know where your next paycheck is coming from?) and the community level (Is this a transportation dead zone or food desert?). Many SDoH efforts, he predicts, will be promoted by organizations with an interest at the state, local, or even block level.

Heard is cautious about the use of AI, but points out that OCR and NLP are valuable for translating the data from collected surveys into structured data that institutions can act on.

His recommendations to clinicians: Start by finding out what their EHRs provide, and what surveys are available.  If you want to learn from someone passionate about CIEs and SDoH data, then you’ll enjoy this interivew with Steve Heard from J2 Interactive.

Learn more about J2 Interactive: https://www.j2interactive.com/

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