The American Medical Association has some ambitious goals for applying data to healthcare, which CEO James Madara, MD, outlined in remarks at the AMA Interim Meeting Saturday.
The announcement follows October's launch of AMA's Integrated Health Model Initiative, a collaboration with the health and technology sectors that will build an era of better, more effective patient care. The IHMI will provide a continuous learning environment and a digital platform with a common data model to drive interoperability.
"It's been said that data is the oil of this century, and so harnessing the power of health data in a way that is both efficient for the physician and improves patient care is an enormous and important challenge — one that should be led by physicians," Dr. Madara said. "Our allies in the field are calling our IHMI solution both dearly needed and incredibly bold. It certainly could be a game-changer in healthcare delivery."
The framework of organized health data created under IHMI feeds into the national call for greater data transparency.
"We are living in the Information Age, and yet even for that small pool of digital devices that have been well characterized as validated, evidence-based, and actionable, even the best are largely not connected; and the data that's ultimately entered into the patient record tends to not be organized in any useful way to say the least," said Dr. Madara. "IHMI establishes a common data model that can be more easily shared across health systems, allowing the data elements of one vendor platform to be meaningfully translated to another. This achieves interoperability, not simply by being able to share limited data elements, but by the ability to transfer real clinical meaning."