Following the example of Germany in easing access to personal health records could be the driver to improving patient outcomes and saving lives.
This is according to Dr Avi Mehra, associate partner and CSO at IBM, who was participating in a breakout session at the Association of British Insurers’ Annual Conference at the QE2 Centre in Westminster today.
Mehra maintained both health insurers and the NHS face challenges in accessing patient data to provide them real benefit.
“I know from health insurers that we work with that you’re sitting on a treasure trove of data about consumers, about patients,” Mehra said.
“But even getting access to all of that data, linking it in a complete way to use that to be able to generate insights, to make better decisions, is very hard despite having a treasure trove of data at your fingertips.”
Though Mehra added the comprehensiveness of the data is also often an issue.
“As a health insurer, you only have one part of the picture,” Mehra continued. “How do you join that up with other health and social care data to really inform clinical decision making that can really improve patient outcomes and improve patient lives?”
Consequently, Mehra revealed he and his employer champion empowering citizens and members to have more control and access to their data.
For IBM, this come in the form of a collaboration with an insurer in mainland Europe.
“In Germany, we collaborated with the leading statutory health insurer there around developing their end-to-end patient electronic health records to provide citizens with access and control of their health data,” Mehra told delegates.
“IBM is the developing partner for the NHS app, again helping to transform the access to health and care for citizens across the NHS in England.
“If we’re really going to think about how data can be used to save lives and overcome some of the issues around data – access, data sharing, interoperability, is the place to start where I think it is really making it easier from an insurance perspective for members, for patients to have access and more control over their data and then allow that to be a driver of really positive change.”