Digital Infrastructure for the Learning Health System: The Foundation for Continuous Improvement in Health and Health Care

Excerpt

Progress in computational science, information technology (IT), and biomedical and health research methods have made it possible to foresee the emergence of a learning health system that enables both the seamless and efficient delivery of best care practices and the real-time generation and application of new knowledge. Increases in the complexity and costs of care compel such a system. With rapid advances in approaches to diagnosis (such as molecular diagnostics), therapeutics, genetic insights into individual variation, and emerging measurement modalities (such as within proteomics and imaging), clinicians and patients must sort through exponentially increasing numbers of factors with each clinical decision. At the same time, healthcare costs are draining the purchasing power of consumers and handicapping the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, yet health outcomes are falling far short of the possible.

Against this backdrop of opportunity and urgency, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies, sponsored by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), convened a series of expert meetings to explore strategies for accelerating the development of the digital infrastructure for the learning health system. Presentations and major elements of those discussions are summarized in this publication, Digital Infrastructure for the Learning Health System: The Foundation for Continuous Improvement in Health and Health Care.