Jun 26 2012
KQED: Turning Health Data Into Information
Two key elements necessary to turn this public data resource into better health and financial reward are 1) a robust private/public partnership and 2) a rethinking of the traditional roles of doctors and patients, who are increasingly taking greater responsibility for making decisions about their care…To create something useful, designers need to ask the right questions: of the data, of healthcare providers and of the public. Although patients couldn't previously see it, HHS has collected data about patient satisfaction and safety in US hospitals for years, primarily for hospital administrators to use. HHS also knows that 80 percent of adult Internet users now search online for health information and nearly 90 percent of Americans have a cell phone. Under the new initiative, they asked what the data could mean to patients (Harris, 6/22).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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