Hospitals and health systems are managing immense amounts of digital data, which can bring challenges for ensuring data security and avoiding identity fragmentation. We recently spoke with Flavio Villanustre, chief information security officer with LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, about shifting from information sharing to putting identity at the center of your strategy.
What kind of changes have you seen with data over the last decade?
The first thing I would mention is the rise in non-traditional data sources. Social determinants of health and even genomic data are now part of care decision-making. Additionally, health data often comes from outside traditional healthcare—think Fitbits, Apple Watches and home monitoring devices.
Another change is cloud migration, as healthcare data has moved from on-premises servers to HIPAA-compliant cloud platforms.
Finally, there are increasing cybersecurity risks. Patients can now view, download, and transmit their health records from portals or apps — something that was rare a decade ago. If those consumer identities are compromised (for example, through phishing), that highly sensitive data could be exposed to threat actors. Meanwhile, healthcare has become a prime cyberattack target with ransomware incidents skyrocketing.
What differences are you seeing specifically in data management?
There has been a significant increase in data within healthcare as a whole and within health systems, including data from electronic health record systems, telehealth platforms, third-party sources and wearables, and general consumer information. This results in fragmentation and the need to resolve identities from disparate data sources.
Resolving identities is essential for care quality, data security and access. This includes ensuring that only authorized users gain access to sensitive health data or combining all data for one identity to eliminate fragmented or duplicate information.
Provider organizations can shift their thinking from information sharing to putting identity at the center of their strategy by linking disparate records, solving challenges like duplicate records, common names, name changes, errors and more. They can also leverage a referential database with comprehensive, longitudinal customer views that remain accurate over time. Access to a large consumer data referential database allows organizations to compare data records to that database to determine if they are up to date.
What are use cases for an identity-first strategy?
An identity-first strategy is an enterprise-wide initiative that brings insights from all patient data available. Your strategy will resolve patient data for each patient identity, making it available to meet business requirements and patient needs:
Focusing on identity resolution allows you to address many pain points and help your operations to run more efficiently. With data improvements, you can save lives and offer better care. One critical area of improvement can be patient safety. Clinicians will have a more complete record, including drug allergies and care history, reducing errors that occur as a result of missing information. A more complete record gains efficiency for the patient and clinician. You don’t have to keep asking the same questions of the patient. Simple items like Social Security number will already be in a private and secure record. Any form the patient completes introduces a protected document that must be handled with care.
Complete records are necessary, but how do you get your patients into the clinician’s office to ask for health screens or other preventive care? Studies have confirmed that patient engagement is key to engage patients in their own healthcare. In the long-term, patient engagement or the lack of it impacts health outcomes. Incorrect contact information is the first barrier to engagement. After you get over that hurdle, you can focus on engagement strategy and help people live healthier lives.
Having the right data matters. By looking at population trends, you can identity risks that you might not be aware of. You’ll need specialized data such as social determinants of health. Knowing more about your patients enables you to help them address care needs through relevant communications.
Patient data must be protected and ensuring a secure patient portal is essential. Patients expect it and so does HIPAA. Mishaps have financial and reputational consequences. Though security is priority, patients are demanding a positive digital experience. It can increase portal utilization and contribute to patient satisfaction and health outcomes. Today’s technology allows you to balance patient experience and security.
How do these changes impact consumer loyalty?
A better digital and care experience can increase patient satisfaction, which is an effective indicator of quality in healthcare. It has been shown that when care is personalized and person-centered, it is associated with improved outcomes and utilization of services.
Patient satisfaction is important to both your business and to member health, so offering a streamlined, identity-first experience should be a priority. By placing identity resolution at the center of your data strategy, you can transform fragmented information into a unified foundation that improves clinical outcomes and builds lasting patient trust.
Flavio Villanustre is an accomplished technology executive and cybersecurity expert with extensive experience in the areas of big data, open-source technologies and artificial intelligence.