As health care has shifted to increasingly rely on digital tools for patient care, digital inclusion has become critical to promoting health care equity.
The project began with a vexing problem. Imaging tests that turned up unexpected issues — such as suspicious lung nodules — were being overlooked by busy caregivers, and patients who needed prompt follow-up weren’t getting it.
A federal law requires that health information be easy to exchange by the end of this year. The development of standardized application programming interfaces, or APIs, will go a long way toward making that possible. Care providers, health plans, and software vendors should take several steps to capitalize on the opportunities that they will generate.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the delivery of health care continues to grow rapidly. Access to patient medical data is often central to the use of AI in the delivery of health care. As the exchange of medical information between patients, physicians, and the care team through AI products increases, protecting an individual's information and privacy becomes even more important.