Learning from our Past: Improving Health Equity through Proactive Standards, Interoperability and Cross Sector Governance

Room 1 (Salon H,I,J,K,L)
With the increasing awareness and acceptance of the role that unmet social care needs plays on health outcomes, healthcare costs and resulting health inequities, a sense of urgency is unfolding that risks history repeating itself. Decades earlier the healthcare industry’s effort towards technology, in advance of standards that allow the data to move between systems or laws to govern that movement, closely mirrors the social referral systems proliferation we see today. Healthcare had to retroactively adapt systems to developing standards. Now that healthcare infrastructure is in place and standards bodies exist to support data exchange, we can move faster in social care. Stakeholder feedback across the nation is calling on HIE’s to unite the data and the work towards social and health care data integration. Using the lessons from past experiences while maintaining a focus of health equity, industry leaders will explore the real-world barriers to cross sector social care data interoperability and explore possible solutions allowing systems to emerge that impact health equity.