Besa Bauta: Healthcare Data Leaders Must Work Together in the World Post-COVID-19

Besa Bauta, CDO at children’s charity MercyFirst, argues that
better collaboration between health and social care data leaders
will be needed to meet patient expectations in the post-pandemic
‘new normal’

Patient and employee expectations around data sharing and
accessibility are soaring as a result of COVID-19, MercyFirst CDO
Besa Bauta argues in this week’s Business of Data podcast
episode.


The pandemic has thrown the benefits of free-flowing patient data
between healthcare settings into stark relief. But the industry’s
data leaders will need to collaborate more effectively to make
this vision a reality.


“We can’t think, ‘I’m the best hospital and I have the best
system,’ and not think about your neighbor’s hospital,” Dr Bauta
argues. “Your patients are going to go from hospital to hospital
and service to service.”


“Hospitals and other systems have to react to that consumer
demand,” she adds. “So, each of us has to work together to ensure
that all our systems are working together the way that they
should.”


The current incompatibility between different Electronic Health
Records and other healthcare data systems remains a key obstacle
on the industry’s path to data maturity.


“There’s plenty of data,” Dr Bauta explains. “The problem is that
it’s coming from all over the place.”


“We don’t have a complete picture because it’s fragmented in four
different systems,” she continues. “That’s a challenge, and each
time I’m in a meeting I’m finding that there’s new information
somewhere else that we should be aware of.”


For this reason, she says breaking down data silos, cataloguing
what data exists and determining what data is ‘mission-critical’
will remain top priorities for the sector’s data leaders going
into 2021.
Key Takeaways

• Demand for healthcare data is soaring. The
COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the need for accurate and timely
patient and operational data into stark relief
• Healthcare data leaders must facilitate data
sharing. Patients increasingly expect their data to flow
seamlessly between healthcare settings, depending on where
they’re being treated
• Technical challenges are slowing progress.
Poor systems interoperability and data silos are making it hard
for CDOs to lay the foundations for their data strategies