Readers Write: Health Tech Innovation Requires Accurate Person Matching

Health Tech Innovation Requires Accurate Person Matching
By Jitin Asnaani

Jitin Asnaani, MBA is chief product officer of Rhapsody.

Elsevier’s “Clinician of the Future” report shows that nearly as many clinicians agree the widespread use of digital health technologies will enable the positive transformation of healthcare (70%) that believe digital health technologies will be a challenging burden (69%). This means health tech must innovate to maximize the positive while minimizing the burden.

The pressure is on to build solutions that capture the potential to revolutionize healthcare and address the increasing challenge of accurately managing and leveraging the data generated from these innovations.

Healthcare generates about 30% of the world’s data volume and is growing with a compound annual growth rate faster than any other industry. Sources for this data explosion are numerous and diverse, including primary care facilities, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, consumer-generated data, plus IT systems such as EHRs, patient registries, radiology information systems, and medical devices. This brings an immense opportunity and challenge.

As health tech companies onboard data from this expanding number of sources, it becomes increasingly harder to confidently manage and reconcile identity data. In fact, studies indicate that errors in matching records to the correct person occur up to half of the time.

Correctly managing person data and tying the data together is non-trivial. To maintain trust in the data-driven solutions provided, clinicians and patients must be able to interpret and use all this data. Health tech companies are responsible for each piece of information they collect, regardless of where it’s generated. Consequently, internal teams and even customers are forced to spend time resolving duplicates, which increases total cost of ownership and reduces trust in data quality.

Consider the example of an at-home glucose monitoring device. To make the device data actionable, information must be obtained not only from the device but also directly from the consumer, the provider managing diabetes care, a pharmacy, and an insurance provider. Each source uses a different system with inconsistent data cleanliness.

Complicating this further, a person may be known by variations of their name in different systems –John, Jon, or Johnny, for example. The complexity in matching all data from various sources and formats into a single, clean record makes the potential for error and the strain on data stewards’ time extremely high.

Enterprise Master Person Index (EMPI) technology emerges as a critical element in overcoming these challenges. By offering a centralized repository for identity information that also adds a layer of science to improve match rates, EMPI facilitates accurate person matching across diverse systems while ensuring data integrity and interoperability. This centralized approach streamlines data management processes and enhances the reliability of electronic records, ultimately leading to better clinical outcomes.

Advanced EMPI solutions leverage AI and machine learning capabilities to further enhance data accuracy by automating the linking of person records. By mimicking human decision-making processes, these solutions reduce manual intervention, improve data consistency, and increase efficiency in data management workflows. This not only saves time and resources, but also enhances the overall quality of healthcare data.

For health tech companies building innovative technologies and data-driven applications, an EMPI is foundational to ensuring data accuracy within their solutions. This builds customer trust around the quality of information delivered by or powering, the product, especially when ingesting, integrating, and reconciling data across multiple sources.

When considering whether to buy or build an EMPI solution, health tech companies must weigh the benefits of leveraging a reliable EMPI partner against the costs and complexities of in-house development. Partnering with an established EMPI provider can accelerate time to market, ensure scalability, and mitigate risks associated with infrastructure development, allowing companies to focus on their core competencies and innovation.

Effectively managing person data is essential for driving innovation and improving patient outcomes. By leveraging advanced EMPI technology, health tech innovators can effectively manage person data and improve data accuracy and consistency, aiding their customers in enhancing the quality of care provided while maintaining trust in their data-driven solutions.