The Critical Role of Technology and Data Sharing in Public Health Emergencies

The Covid-19 pandemic began over five years ago, ultimately exposing critical vulnerabilities in our U.S. public healthcare system at the cost of too many lives. We continue to feel the effects today. 

I recently attended the World Economic Forum’s Annual Healthcare Roundtable at which the overarching theme was that data is the new oil, the fuel of our future. Nowhere is that analogy more apt than in the healthcare industry. Real-time access to robust data is critical to support experts as they confront health crises. It is further recognized that, just like oil, raw data must be refined to be useful, but I would like to extend that analogy further: the vehicle and the driver must also be equipped to use the fuel (data) effectively. In healthcare, not only must accurate data be gathered as quickly and completely as possible, it must be analyzed and the refined product delivered to the front line vehicles (doctors, nurses, pharmacists) expeditiously. Perhaps most importantly, the driver (patient) must be prepared to utilize the product (data-driven prevention and treatment) and to recognize and avoid contaminants (disinformation). 

A recent example highlighting the value of sharing data to support experts during a health crisis is seen in the multi-state response to the Measles outbreak. We continue to see recurring vaccine hesitancy and a distrust in public health that may result in even more lives lost. Similarly, during recent mpox outbreaks over the last two to three years, by the time local public health officials received actionable data, the outbreak had already run its course.

These recent examples underscore our continued difficulty in making data available nationally and scaling education campaigns, highlighting gaps in our public health readiness and what we need to do to prepare for not only the next pandemic, but any public health emergency. 

Covid-19 exposed our healthcare system’s unreadiness 

Most evidently, Covid-19 put a spotlight on the technological gaps throughout our healthcare system and the overall lack of interoperability and data sharing. 

Early response efforts in 2020 were slowed by utilization of old technology, the fax machine, to collect test results. Our heavy reliance on such outdated technology was a significant limitation in disseminating information that was often not current or standardized. 

Even when the data trickled in, it was limited and came from many disparate sources that required manual processing for deduplication, geographic correlation, and overall refining to achieve accurate test results and case numbers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state public health officials were behind from the beginning, partly because of the unpredictability – and unstandardized formats – of the data coming in that complicated our national response and education of the public.

The price of poor public health education 

A widespread lack of scientific literacy and willingness to engage in public health understanding also created tensions that extended far beyond our technical limitations. Communication in the early days of the pandemic was sporadic and inconsistent.

Had our public health officials been better equipped with the necessary resources and data from the beginning, we might have had fewer delays in translating evidence from real experience with the novel coronavirus to updated public health guidance, thereby minimizing the iterations of recommendations that seemed to foster distrust within the community. If our public was better prepared to understand how viruses adapt, evidence changes, and scientific recommendations evolve, perhaps we could have avoided some of the deep skepticism that generated susceptibility to disinformation. Our industry simply wasn’t prepared for the rapid spread of disinformation across social media, creating uncertainty, suspicion, and outright resistance. 

Misinformation was a significant factor in the case of myocarditis, a very rare complication of the Covid-19 vaccination. The condition is seven times more likely to occur in a Covid-19 infection than with the vaccine itself. Among patients who contract the infection post-vaccination, the risk of myocarditis is reduced by half. The broader public struggled to assess these risks in a way that allowed them to make rational, well-informed decisions, highlighting an opportunity for the healthcare industry to improve how we deliver messages across diverse audiences and channels, including providing easily digestible educational snippets to facilitate comprehension and acceptance of those messages

A wake-up call on health equity

The pandemic didn’t affect every community and population equally. Covid-19 mortality was five times higher for adults in lower socioeconomic positions than for those in higher socioeconomic positions, according to the National Institutes of Health. Other studies also reveal how historically vulnerable and marginalized populations had higher rates of infection and lower survival rates. 

Five years later, the structural inequities highlighted during the pandemic continue to plague our industry. We must begin to rebuild trust with communities that have historically been underserved by addressing barriers to care and promoting greater transparency to ensure that everyone has equitable access to care.

Where does our public health infrastructure go from here?

Our public health system needs to move forward enlightened by our experience. We have an imperative to restore trust in science and continue to advance equity, and we have the means to do so with technology, data connections, and dedicated healthcare professionals.

Meanwhile, funding cuts and closures threaten to force our industry to take a step backward and may leave us even more unprepared for a future crisis. We are eliminating the positions of the very experts on whom we would need to rely on in future pandemics. It is critically important to preserve our expert scientific and public health resources, battered though they may be from the fallout from the last pandemic, so they can ensure we are prepared for the next one.

Emerging technologies and AI innovations were simmering before the pandemic and gained significant traction throughout the global challenge and beyond.    

Building off this momentum, services such as virtual care and wearable technologies have already improved accessibility for countless individuals. Additionally, AI tools, like agentic AI, are being used to inform population health outreach and improve access to healthcare delivery. This is only the beginning of AI’s potential. These technologies will play a pivotal role in helping us overcome inequities by bridging gaps in language, education, and access, and by building speed to impact by better understanding potential health threats and addressing them quickly and effectively.

Expanding on the rapid, successful rollout of Covid-19 vaccines that saved countless lives, we now have the opportunity to reinforce our infrastructure and data capabilities to ensure that we face the next pandemic fully armed with the lessons of the last. As we navigate the current transition, our commitment as an industry should focus on identifying and closing those gaps in our infrastructure – and ensuring we do not cause new ones – to make sure we’re prepared for the next crisis.

Photo: elenabs, Getty Images

Dr. Paige Kilian serves as the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for Inovalon. In this role, Dr. Kilian is responsible for the oversight of the medical directors of the company, the clinical content and design of the company’s software and analytics, and the clinical training, quality, policies, oversight, and compliance of associated operations. For more than a decade, Dr. Kilian has led a team of clinical personnel who bring the latest best practices and evidence-based clinical standards to Inovalon’s products and services.

This post appears through the MedCity Influencers program. Anyone can publish their perspective on business and innovation in healthcare on MedCity News through MedCity Influencers. Click here to find out how.