Health care today includes a partnership once considered unlikely: clinicians working alongside data scientists. These teams, now common in the Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield network, strive to give health care providers information that will improve patient care. It’s part of the insurer’s partnership with Google Cloud and Verily to create an analytical, data-driven engine for its Living Health model.
“That kind of application of agile principles and, most importantly, cross-functional teams working as a single unit to achieve the outcome has helped increase trust and transparency,” Highmark Health Chief Analytics Officer Richard Clarke said in a recent episode of the Pittsburgh Technology Council's TechVibe Radio podcast.
Living Health is the model Highmark created for its reinvented approach to health care. The goal is to put patients and clinicians first while also creating a digital system that connects everyone on an individual’s care team.
“We believe fragmentation is one of the biggest challenges in health care,” Clarke said. “Frankly, a lot of the digital health solutions coming out now actually make that worse. People’s interactions are all over the place. They don’t connect and they don’t give the clinician additional information to do their best for a patient.”
Backed by a six-year collaboration with Google Cloud and its sister company, Verily, Clarke and his team are building a robust data-driven analytics system called the Living Health Dynamic Platform. It is designed to provide simple, proactive and personalized recommendations to help each patient live their best life. The plans are tailored to each patient based on available data, which can be updated and further customized by clinicians.
“As a leading integrated delivery network with a large population, Highmark is poised to show how a technology-enabled environment can help their members achieve better health in a personalized and accessible way that also lowers the costs of care,” Dr. Vivian Lee, president of health platforms at Verily, said when the collaboration was announced. “By providing actionable insights for patients and clinicians, the tools we build together will make the experience of health care more engaging and effective for all.”
Health care’s data journey
The use of data analytics, digital solutions and technology has transformed many industries — changing everything from the way consumers buy products to finding transportation. But progress in health care has been slow.
“I’ve had the opportunity to be in lots of industries, and the use and application of data is most challenging in health care,” said Clarke, who previously served as associate principal at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
While the health care analytics market is growing fast, putting that data to use has remained challenging. The magnitude of some of the decisions, especially those related to an individual patient’s health, contributes to the challenges, Clarke said, as does the complexity of the data.
According to an industry survey by Black Book, 67% of payer data and 90% of all data within a provider enterprise goes unused for advanced analytics, meaning the benefits of that data are missed.
It’s a big miss. “The accessibility of integrated data and the surge of new technologies, which empower providers to analyze data more comprehensively, allow every health care manager to make strategic decisions and cost implications and measure goal progress analytics,” Black Book President Doug Brown said in an announcement about the survey results.
An inclusive approach
Advancing the use of data analytics also means paying attention to pervasive issues of health equity.
Highmark’s Living Health strategy includes implementing a questionnaire on the universal social determinants of health, which provides Highmark with accurate data about health barriers, including access to safe housing, transportation, job opportunities and nutritious foods. The organization offers more nontraditional interventions to support healthy living based on this information, such as connecting people to subsidized or free access to programs that address food insecurity. It also is working on ways to ensure digital and virtual health services are equitably available in marginalized communities.
“We have to make sure whatever we’re doing continues to be … scalable, but also incredibly inclusive,” Clarke said. “That’s where we're going to keep pushing ourselves to say, ‘How do we roll out some of these things, especially those that are digital-first, to make sure they are inclusive and reach all the communities we serve across West Virginia, New York, Delaware and Pennsylvania, so everyone can benefit from the positive impact we know we can have?’”
Picture people receiving care, not just when they physically need it, but long before then. In the future, Highmark will deploy data diagnostics to step in ahead of time and engage people in their health even before they think of scheduling a doctor’s visit. Learn more about the Living Health model.
One of America's leading health insurance organizations and an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Highmark Inc. (the Health Plan) and its affiliated health plans (collectively, the Health Plans) work to deliver high-quality, accessible, understandable, and affordable experiences, outcomes, and solutions to customers.
Lauren Lawley Head is a freelance writer for The Business Journals Content Studio.
