Testing a new data model to support evidence-informed decision making

Simon Hagens

By Simon Hagens, Director of Benefits Realization (@infoway)

Simon Hagens

A few months ago, Canada Health Infoway’s ImagineNation Data Impact Challenge put out a call to all authorized users of Canadian health data sets to determine if important health and health care questions, like duplication rates for tests and exams, or the impact of prompt discharge summaries on re-admission could be answered in a timely, privacy-sensitive manner. As a user of health system evidence, I know how hard it can be to find the information needed in a timely manner, so our goal was to test the feasibility of a new model for answering practice and policy questions quickly, and provide confidence by generating evidence from multiple sources.

During the two-month Challenge period, we were amazed with the level of participation and even more excited about the quality of the entries submitted in only 60 days. To say the least, they exceeded our expectations; in fact many of them put a spotlight on important issues affecting care for Canadians. All of these submissions are available here.

The Data Impact Challenge team is excited to share some of the insights from the Challenge during the tweet chat with #HCSMCA. We’ll talk about the process, key learnings and what we plan on doing with the insights gathered from the Challenge.

We hope you can join us to discuss these three topics on November 4 at 1 pm ET (time zone converter). To participate, please follow #HCSMCA and add the hashtag to all your tweets. During the one-hour tweet chat, we will discuss the following topics:

• T1: Could data sourced from @Infoway’s Data Impact challenge be used to inform future policy decisions?
• T2: How can the insights gained from this data challenge be shared/used?
• T3: What would you like to learn from future data challenges?

In addition to the tweet chat, we will be sharing the results from the submissions during our webinar series, where some of the participating teams will discuss their results. To learn more about the webinar series, visit our website.

About Simon Hagens
Simon is Director of Benefits Realization at Canada Health Infoway, focusing on the ‎adoption of digital health solutions and ensuring the clinicians, patients and the health system see the value.

Filed under: Guest moderator post, hcsmca Tagged: Canada Health Infoway, data, digital health