Datavant’s vision is to organize the world’s health data. We believe that this is one of the most important data challenges of this era: if we are successful over the next 20 years, we are confident that our work will improve patient outcomes, bring medicines and medical solutions to market faster, reduce costs, inspire entrepreneurship, fight disease, and improve lives. Here’s how.
We believe that data has the power to transform healthcare. In the coming decades, the advanced use of data and analytics has the ability to transform everything from how scientists discover drugs to how pharma runs clinical trials, regulators approve drugs, doctors select treatments for patients, and payers measure value and reimburse. The advanced use of data can unlock:
Unfortunately, data siloing holds back these possibilities. Against the backdrop of what we could accomplish with a data-driven approach, there is the stark reality that most data is extremely siloed.
There are many types of silos holding progress back, such as:
Consider the domain of “real-world data” (i.e. data about what happens to patients outside the context of clinical trials). The average person has data split across dozens of databases over the course of their lives: 5+ different primary care physicians, 10+ different specialists’ or hospitals’ EHR systems, 5+ insurers’ databases, 5+ pharmacies’ databases, and many additional emerging sources such as wearables and genetic profiles.
The parties that control each source of data are often unwilling or unable to directly share data, making any data-driven analysis extremely difficult to conduct. Patient privacy, data security, and misaligned commercial incentives have created significant bottlenecks to combining more comprehensive data sets, and each must be addressed for data to reach its potential in medicine.
Our focus is on removing the silos that have held back analytical research in the past. Our products reduce the friction involved in connecting data between different data sources, with technology focused on patient linking, data permission management, and data discovery–each of which serve to unlock more data sharing. We aim to become the trusted steward that is ultimately used by all healthcare data owners and data consumers to safely combine datasets for research purposes.
As we build our business, we are aligned with healthcare data owners and the value we help them create with their data. We make money by creating products that make it easier to for healthcare institutions to combine, share, and unlock the value of data sets.
There are five principles that drive our efforts.
1. We put the patient first: patient privacy and patient benefit are at the center of every decision we make. We believe that sophisticated use of healthcare data should serve patients. Better data can yield better treatments, better drugs, and a better healthcare system overall. We also believe that patients have the right to control how their data is used, and that patients have a right to their data being handled securely. We have built and will continue to build de-identification tools and data visibility tools to ensure organizations can honor patient choices, and we will always put patient benefit at the center of our business.
2. We are seeking to organize all forms of healthcare data. We believe that the combination of data sets is greater than the sum of its parts. In healthcare, there is no one dataset that answers all questions; different parties hold different keys to understanding how the human body works. As a simple example, analyzing genomic data alone and medical history alone are much less valuable than analyzing the combination of genomic and phenotypic data. Safe data sharing unlocks value, and our value as an enterprise lies in eliminating the friction that prevents the combination of data.
3. We serve the healthcare institutions that hold data: we believe that institutions should be able to control and restrict the use of their data. The healthcare data business today is largely an arbitrage business; data aggregators purchase data at the lowest price they can, sell it for the highest price they can, and use it for whatever purposes they see fit. This prevents data liquidity, as most institutions are understandably uncomfortable with their data being used this way. We believe that healthcare institutions should have more control than this: they should be able to determine what other institutions access data from them, how that data is used, and how that data is monetized. Our goal is to be an escrow service where data holders retain control.
4. Datavant’s role is to organize data. We power an ecosystem of data and analytics companies who can understand the data that we organize. Datavant will be focused on making safe data sharing simple, which will require us to power an ecosystem of partners who can use the data effectively. To take advantage of the power of data across healthcare, we expect hundreds (if not thousands) of healthcare analytics companies will emerge over the next decade, and we expect many to be successful at reimagining key parts of healthcare. Our strategy is to build an open tent: in the long run, we aspire to power every healthcare analytics company in the world.
5. We power entrepreneurship around new models of medicine. We are building an open ecosystem around health data. The availability of more extensive and fluid data will take medicine beyond applied analytics and linear clinical support tools. We encourage experimentation and will partner generously with those that seek to explore and expand the power of data.
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We are on a quest to organize the world’s healthcare data. It is the biggest data problem of our generation and an opportunity to save lives. We look forward to unlocking a data-driven future of healthcare.
PS–if this resonates with you, we’re hiring!
AnalyticsIQ, a marketing data and analytics company, recently adopted Datavant’s state de-identification process to enhance the privacy of its SDOH datasets. By undergoing this privacy analysis prior to linking its data with other datasets, AnalyticsIQ has taken an extra step that could contribute to a more efficient Expert Determination (which is required when its data is linked with others in Datavant’s ecosystem).
AnalyticsIQ’s decision to adopt state de-identification standards underscores the importance of privacy in the data ecosystem. By addressing privacy challenges head-on, AnalyticsIQ and similar partners are poised to lead clinical research forward, providing datasets that are not only compliant with privacy requirements, but also ready for seamless integration into larger datasets.
"Stakeholders across the industry are seeking swift, secure access to high-quality, privacy-compliant SDOH data to drive efficiencies and improve patient outcomes,” says Christine Lee, head of health strategy and partnerships at AnalyticsIQ.
“By collaborating with Datavant to proactively perform state de-identification and Expert Determination on our consumer dataset, we help minimize potentially time-consuming steps upfront and enable partners to leverage actionable insights when they need them most. This approach underscores our commitment to supporting healthcare innovation while upholding the highest standards of privacy and compliance."
As the regulatory landscape continues to evolve, Datavant’s state de-identification product offers an innovative tool for privacy officers and data custodians alike. By addressing both state-specific and HIPAA requirements, companies can stay ahead of regulatory demands and build trust across data partners and end-users. For life sciences organizations, this can lead to faster, more reliable access to the datasets they need to drive research and innovation while supporting high privacy standards.
As life sciences companies increasingly rely on SDOH data to drive insights, the need for privacy-preserving solutions grows. Data ecosystems like Datavant’s, which link real-world datasets while safeguarding privacy, are critical to driving innovation in healthcare. By integrating state de-identified SDOH data, life sciences can gain a more comprehensive view of patient populations, uncover social factors that impact health outcomes, and ultimately guide clinical research that improves health.
Both payers and providers are increasingly utilizing SDOH data to enhance care delivery and improve health equity. By incorporating SDOH data into their strategies, both groups aim to deliver more personalized care, address disparities, and better understand the social factors affecting patient outcomes.
Payers increasingly leverage SDOH data to meet health equity requirements and enhance care delivery:
Payers’ consideration of SDOH underscores their commitment to improving health equity, delivering targeted care, and addressing disparities for vulnerable populations.
Capital District Physicians’ Health Plan (CDPHP) incorporated SDOH, partnering with Papa, to combat loneliness and isolation in older adults, families, and other vulnerable populations. CDPHP aimed to address:
By integrating SDOH data, CDPHP enhanced their services to deliver comprehensive care for its Medicare Advantage members.
Value-based care organizations face challenges in fully understanding their patient panels. SDOH data significantly assists providers to address these challenges and improve patient care. Here are some examples of how:
By leveraging SDOH data, providers gain a more comprehensive understanding of their patient population, leading to more targeted and personalized care interventions.
While accessing SDOH data offers significant advantages, challenges can arise from:
To overcome these challenges, providers must have robust data integration strategies, standardization efforts, and access to health data ecosystems to ensure comprehensive and timely access to SDOH data.
With Datavant, healthcare organizations are securely accessing SDOH data, and further enhancing the efficiency of their datasets through state de-identification capabilities - empowering stakeholders across the industry to make data-driven decisions that drive care forward.
Explore how Datavant can be your health data logistics partner.
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