Healthcare data aggregation: A Q&A guide to unified data

What is healthcare data aggregation?

Healthcare data aggregation is the process of consolidating multiple sources of health data into a single, unified data asset. The information being aggregated could include:

• Physician notes
• Lab results
• Diagnostic imaging
• Treatment plans
• Vaccination histories
• Data from wearable devices
• Social determinants of health (SDoH)
• Financial information

The goal of data aggregation is to process large amounts of data so that health teams can glean valuable insights, identify trends, and use projections to inform their workflows.

What are the benefits of data aggregation in healthcare?

For healthcare organizations, the benefits of data aggregation include:

• Better data reliability and quality: A larger sample size enables organizations to examine the health of a single patient in the context of thousands. This way, providers can make more informed decisions and treatments based on reliable, comparative data.
• Reduced administrative burdens: Aggregated data streamlines workflows and creates a single source of truth, enabling more timely and accurate care.
• Preventive care: By aggregating current and historical data, physicians can apply predictive analytics to forecast future health events. Most importantly, physicians can turn these data-driven insights into actions (i.e., if a patient is experiencing “A,” do “B” to achieve “C”).
• Improved collaboration: With aggregated data, providers, insurers, patients, and other stakeholders can effectively collaborate and pursue unified goals.
• Value-based care (VBC): Aggregated data surfaces insights that may not normally be evident in a single patient chart. By helping providers identify and understand the whole patient, aggregation drives more informed decision-making that helps organizations perform more effectively under VBC payment models.

What challenges exist in healthcare data aggregation?

Despite the many benefits of this process, healthcare leaders face two major data aggregation challenges:

• Data quality: Combining data from disparate sources often leads to inconsistent formatting, duplicate entries, and other quality issues. Successful data aggregation requires clean, well-organized data to ensure accurate, complete information.
• Privacy and security: Beyond compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations, it’s critical to protect patients’ sensitive data for each individual’s well-being. Given the industry’s rising rate of data breaches, preventing unauthorized access to data during aggregation should be a top priority.

How is healthcare data aggregation different from data exchange?

At a high level, aggregation involves bringing many pieces of information together, and exchange involves information passing from one entity to another. Healthcare data exchange is a single, transactional experience that involves requesting data from one part of the healthcare ecosystem, packaging it, and sending it to another.

What are the benefits of healthcare data exchange?

The benefits of healthcare data exchange include:

• Improved care coordination, since physicians, specialists, and hospitals can all access and share patient information.
• Patient engagement by empowering patients to take a more active role in their care plans by understanding their medical histories, analyzing their test results, and completing their treatment plans.
• Increased efficiency through electronic health information exchange (HIE), which allows providers to securely access and share a patient’s medical information.

How do health organizations get started with data aggregation?

The key to successful data aggregation lies in trustworthy analytics tools. A secure data platform can retain quality and shareability without compromising privacy, so health teams can focus on insights. Using modern technologies, health teams can aggregate and analyze data from multiple systems to improve care outcomes and drive improved performance. 

Arcadia enables data aggregation for providers and health plans by connecting more than 30 EHR systems and combining them with claims and other data to provide a complete picture of patient care. This way, health teams can make informed decisions about the best care plan for a patient population.

Arcadia’s mission is to deploy data in the service of healthier lives, and we partner with healthcare providers and payer organizations to empower everyone from the C-suite to the exam room. From data aggregation to data exchange, we can unearth insights and accelerate your team’s goals.