The Fuqua School of Business announced Tuesday that it is launching the Health Data Exchange, an initiative to gain consumer support for a national electronic health information network.
Those heading up the initiative said such a network would improve the quality of health care while reducing costs.
"The consumer benefits cover the entire spectrum," said Brian Baum, former chief marketing officer of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's Health Practice. Baum will be heading up the initiative with Ed Hammond, professor emeritus of community and family medicine at the Medical Center and former president of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Under a national electronic health information network, patients would provide their medical histories to the network through an Internet site. Anonymous medical histories would then be made available to medical providers, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and other segments of the health care industry.
Pending specific authorization from individual patients, health care officials would be able to access a patient's medical records with his or her name attached. Each time a patient sought any type of medical care or filled a prescription, his or her medical records would automatically be updated.
At the most basic level, Baum said, an electronic health record would eliminate the need for patients to reconstruct their medical histories every time they interacted with a point of care. "Every time you have to recreate your medical history, there's a chance that something is left off or recorded incorrectly, which gives rise to medical errors," he said.
Dr. Kevin Schulman, director of the Health Sector Management program at Fuqua and a professor of general internal medicine, noted that incomplete medical records can give rise to problems in an industry with so many different providers.
"Most of the time, you don't see the same person for all of your medical services; if you get a chronic disease, you certainly don't see just one person for their care," Schulman said. "We need to make sure that everybody participating in a patient's care has access to all the pertinent information. This would reduce the incidence of medical errors, especially medication errors."
On a larger scale, Baum said, a system that manages health information for entire populations could further advances in drug research and in recognizing emerging disease patterns in society. Ultimately, he said, this creates a solution for the rising costs of health care by increasing efficiency and allowing for other innovations that come from the increased accessibility of information.
Although the concept of an electronic health record has been around for nearly four decades, little progress has been made toward that end due to a lack of market demand, Baum said. Fuqua's new initiative aims to increase market demand by giving consumers a better understanding of the information network's potential benefits and by motivating people to submit personal health information to the exchange.
"Consumers really have no concept of what an electronic health information network could mean for their own health, the health of their families or the cost of health care," Baum said. "Until they understand that, the whole issue of information technology in the health care industry will continue to be hung up in committee with discussion rather than moving forward. The key point of the Health Data Exchange is to focus on the consumer as the driver of change within the industry."
Schulman said the Health Data Exchange initiative is based in Fuqua due to a recognition that the effort would require a different organizational design than that found within the health care environment.
"There are many different players in the health care system that have their own proprietary business models. Hospitals, professional practices, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies: They all have their own models, and we haven't been able to get past those barriers in the past 40 years," Schulman said.
In contrast, Baum said, using a business model could help the Health Data Exchange officials understand how to generate demand for the network, creating a market at the patient level.
Still, the initiative will work closely with health care industry insiders. Schulman said he and Baum are currently putting together an advisory board comprised of representatives from across the health care system. While building consumer acceptance of the network via employers and other organizations, the Health Data Exchange will also involve technology companies, consulting firms, health providers and insurers as well as government and other industry efforts to address the design and implementation for the health information infrastructure.
Schulman said the initiative is currently on an 18-month timeline to develop the consumer focus concept and present it to stakeholders throughout the health care industry. "At the end of 18 months, we hope to see if the Internet can do for health care what it has done for other areas of communication," he said. "It's an ambitious schedule."
Details of the network, including when and where people will enroll, are expected to be finalized within the next year.
The Health Data Exchange was initially underwritten by Duke under the auspices of its Health Sector Management program. The initiative is ultimately expected to operate on a self-financing basis, raising funding through public and private grants.
Schulman said the consumer focus concept has already received a lot of positive support and that the initiative is well positioned to secure the financial support it needs.
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