Editor’s Note: Data trade is essential to coordinating care and providers for older Californians, notably those that have an array of well being and social wants and require multidisciplinary groups to handle care and transitions between settings. Too usually, nevertheless, well being care and social providers are siloed, which creates boundaries that restrict knowledge sharing wanted to enhance care and outcomes.¹ In a brand new report for the Archstone Foundation, Manatt Health offers an outline of knowledge trade in California because it pertains to older adults, together with a strategic panorama, alternatives evaluation, funding priorities and key areas the place funding may have most influence. An government abstract is beneath. Click here to obtain a free copy of the complete report—and here to view our free webinar based mostly on the report, together with essential classes for different states in search of to advance knowledge trade and improve team-based take care of older populations.

As well being and human providers are more and more delivered and supported by digital applied sciences, it’s important that older adults and caregivers have entry to and the potential to make use of digital and broadband-enabled applied sciences. Older adults, nevertheless, nonetheless face a digital divide in the case of the adoption and use of smartphones and the Internet, which stay decrease for older adults than for youthful populations.

Similarly, it can be crucial for the well being and human providers suppliers who take care of older adults to have the well being data expertise (HIT) and knowledge trade capabilities to seamlessly use and trade knowledge with different settings and care group members. While most acute care hospitals and doctor organizations have benefited from funding applications which have enabled adoption of HIT and knowledge trade capabilities over the previous decade, many suppliers who predominantly take care of older adults weren’t eligible for these funding applications, and their capabilities have lagged.

It is essential to contemplate a core set of funding alternatives and ideas in an effort to precisely assess the efficacy of interventions and deploy assets to advance expertise and knowledge trade that allow higher team-based take care of older adults. These core alternatives and ideas, summarized within the desk beneath, are organized into three domains: Collaboration and Partnerships, Research and Evaluation, and Pilot Programs.

Potential Challenges

In pursuing these and different initiatives to enhance team-based take care of older adults, there are a number of potential challenges to remember:

• Change Management. Introducing new applied sciences or care fashions will be disruptive to current workflows, leading to adoption resistance from care group members.
• Workforce. Poor knowledge and expertise illiteracy amongst well being care employees are frequent boundaries to the digital transformation of well being care.²
• Broadband Adoption. Access to high-speed Internet just isn’t but ubiquitous, notably amongst older adults, rural settings and organizations that take care of older adults.^{3, 4}
• Unproven Initiatives, Services and Technologies. There is a continuing stream of thrilling new expertise and knowledge trade options being launched out there, however lots of them are largely untested. Many will fail to achieve traction or will probably be difficult to maintain and scale.
• Remote Patient Monitoring Technologies. Without primary knowledge trade infrastructure in place, it’s exceedingly tough and labor-intensive to systematically incorporate knowledge generated by distant affected person monitoring applied sciences into workflows.
• Cost, Complexity and Business Case for Interoperable Data Exchange. The price and complexity of implementing the applied sciences, instruments and methods wanted for interoperable knowledge trade have meant that the promise of higher knowledge trade alone just isn’t at all times a compelling sufficient enterprise rationale to drive precise trade.

These challenges will be addressed by way of cautious deliberation of potential pitfalls on the outset of any initiative. Indeed, the panorama of knowledge trade presents vital alternatives to deploy investments that advance cross-sector, team-based take care of older adults.

_{¹ “Health information technology to improve care for people with multiple chronic conditions,” Health Services Research. Aug. 2021. Available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-6773.13860.}

_{² “A Digitally Competent Health Workforce: Scoping Review of Educational Frameworks,” Journal of Medical Internet Research. Nov. 2020. Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7677019/.}

_{³ “Internet Adoption and the ‘Digital Divide’ in California,” California Emerging Technology Fund. 2021. Available at https://www.cetfund.org/action-and-results/statewide-surveys/2021-2/.}

_{⁴ “Tips for Senior Care Organizations on Upgrading Their Network Infrastructure,” Health Tech Magazine. Jul. 2022. Available at https://healthtechmagazine.net/article/2022/07/tips-senior-care-organizations-upgrading-their-network-infrastructure.}