The Data Challenges of SDOH, and How to Overcome Them

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it's the importance of having quality, verified data accessible to care providers and public officials to help combat the spread of a communicable disease. Even before the pandemic, efforts to capture and integrate SDOH data across the healthcare continuum have been plagued with interoperability issues, culture gaps, and lack of coordination.

Technology can make it possible to synthesize data sources of different kinds to address their inconsistencies, help identify errors or misreporting, and integrate credible new feeds.

The challenges can be overcome with digitization of the data, forming a longitudinal health record for the patient across different data sets for better predictive and risk score analysis, and by ensuring that data is shared in a secure and permissioned basis only.