9: Don Woodlock: Capturing Cleaner Data Across the Care Continuum

Across healthcare, access to data is increasing exponentially and bringing new opportunities for stakeholders throughout the industry. But it’s important to understand that when it comes to data, availability is not quite as important as usefulness. As the coronavirus pandemic tightens economic activity and strains hospitals in many countries, actionable data holds promise to reduce the impact. We spoke with Don Woodlock, head of the HealthShare business unit at InterSystems, before COVID-19 emerged, but his insights into data’s role in improving the healthcare system have only grown more important. Healthcare is seeing a shift toward so-called “clean data,” which is more useful in helping generate effective insight, Woodlock says. Late last year, he caught up with InterSystems organization’s partners, including health systems, health information exchanges (HIE) and payer organizations, to understand their approaches. Across that spectrum, capturing clean data was a critical mission objective. So here’s the big question: how do these forward-thinking organizations plan to achieve that goal? In this episode of InterSystems PULSEcast, Woodlock spotlights the answers and examines how critical healthcare change-makers like health systems, HIEs and payers are fitting data into forms that are helpful to doctors, data analysts and other key players. He also explores the opportunities inherent in following the clean data trend, and how enterprising organizations can prepare to act upon the insights that are sure to follow.