07 Oct Social Informatics: Meeting Social Determinants of Health Needs

According to a recent JAMA study, social informatics could be the answer to some of healthcare’s Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) data problems. Social informatics is a burgeoning field that allows providers to leverage SDOH data to best provide care for patients.

As highlighted in this recent EHR Intelligence article, the field of social informatics is coming into the forefront for its ability to overcome the deeper data analytic and interoperability challenges for bringing SDOH efforts to life.

The JAMA study points to the challenge of EHRs not making social data easily accessible and integration being a common issue. The study also highlighted how most health systems typically face massive interoperability issues when implementing SDOH into their respective EHRs.

Social Informatics can also provide a benefit for health payers as SDOH and population health efforts continue to expand. In addition, many of today’s health data management and analytic tools are helping to overcome today’s SDOH challenges – for both payers and providers.

For example, IMAT Solutions’ robust data management platform helps payers to better align claims and clinical systems to inform and drive new SDOH and population health initiatives, as well as help to measure the outcomes of these efforts.

Leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP), IMAT customers have been able to identify SDOH indicators that already exist within their data to better identify those at risk. From Provider Dashboards to Business Intelligence tools to longitudinal patient charts, IMAT’s Health Data Analytic capabilities can transform population health and risk management for payers.

To learn more about how payers can best harness their data for improved analytics, interoperability and outcomes, please click here.