Social Determinants of Health: Broadening the Horizons with Data-Driven Healthcare
- SolvEdge
- Sep 21, 2021
- 4 mins read
Social factors including the economic stability, neighborhood, physical environment, education, food, community, safety and social context—all have direct impact on the mortality, morbidity, life expectancy, healthcare expenditures, health status, functional limitations, among many other factors that contribute to the overall health and well-being of individuals
In the consumer-centric era, it’s critical that healthcare leaders explore the untapped potential of SDOH to transform experiences, accelerate outcomes and bring a clear advantage to the healthcare community that they serve.
This article outlines key SDOH strategies that organizations can consider—to create an increasingly meaningful impact on patients, while gaining the competitive edge through socio-economic components.
Social Determinants of Health—capturing the essence of intelligent data gathered from critical social factors on how healthcare consumers live, work, grow and age
1. Build Awareness
SDOH approached in silos may not be fully leveraging the capabilities that unlock the maximum potential of social. Global healthcare leaders can bring the community together to highlight the infinite possibilities of social in transforming the healthcare ecosystem. Some of the key factors that can be considered to build awareness among the stakeholders include:
Similar use cases used to solve a critical issue through social determinants in the past
Additional skillsets and resources to build the team
Ensuring that the key stakeholders align on the new concept
Building a strong foundation on trusted partnerships and collaborations
Establishing goals and accountability
2. Integrate Data Systems to Unify Experiences
Once the coalitions have been built, the team members need to look at strategic ways of modernizing legacy databases, integrating disparate systems and workflows to unify Patient-Physician experiences. In the world of consumerism, patients as consumers are attuned to seamless, high-touch digital experiences and they expect the same from healthcare. Integrating massive volumes of unstructured data can help streamline processes and optimize efficiencies, while enabling healthcare providers offer collaborative, continuous and cohesive care.
3. Create Actionable Insights
Healthcare organizations can leverage the possibilities of population health, predictive and prescriptive analytics to navigate the behavioral patterns of individuals and populations. While most consumers feel the responsibility to drive positive change, healthcare leaders should also look at ways of overcoming challenges where care providers hesitate to share predictive data in consideration of medical histories. Alternatively, despite high levels of motivation, most often organizations also face operational challenges in terms of tools and technologies to prevent chronic critical illnesses.
4. Promote User Adoption
Even the most intuitive and visionary strategy is bound to fail without user adoption. The success of the SDOH measures largely depend on the willingness of the communities to proactively participate in the Social Determinants of Health initiatives. Those decision makers and influencers need to have a strong belief in the concept and the credibility to build trust among the targeted communities. Technology is another significant factor that enables care providers in promoting SDOH strategies among major populations.
5. Track, Monitor and Improve
Successful SDOH initiatives involve continuous tracking and monitoring to measure and improve the social campaign performance. Healthcare organizations can leverage the machine learning and deep learning capabilities of AI to feed essential data gathered through various sources—to drive actionable insights for better decisions and redeployment strategies.
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