Dr Bobby Green Explains How Changing Oncology Landscape Drives Big Data Initiatives

Oncologists envision a move towards using data to become a learning health system, which is aided by the changing landscape emphasizing quality and value, explained Bobby Green, MD, MSCE, senior vice president of clinical oncology at Flatiron Health.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How can learnings from big data be better incorporated in everyday care?

That question really gets at the point of what is a learning healthcare system. We’re very, very early here, but I think the vision which is shared among a lot of people in this field is that you go from measurement to making interventions to measuring the outcomes that come from those interventions, and then taking those data, understanding what the outcomes of your interventions are, and then feeding that back into the system, so you can learn from what you’ve done before and adjust the interventions that you’re making to further improve care.

I think we’re very, very early, but all of the work that’s being done now ultimately leads to that idea of a learning healthcare system, which was advocated several years ago by the Institute of Medicine. A lot of the work being done now, you can view as being steps towards that ultimate goal.

How has the push toward payment reform advanced the use of data analytics to improve care?

There is no question that the changing landscape is driving a lot of this, and I think the perfect example of that is the Oncology Care Model. Both from a theoretical perspective, now people are starting to think about quality and cost in ways that they weren’t before, but also at a very practical level. CMS is now giving pretty rich claims data to a lot of practices that have never seen data like this before. It’s really opening up a whole new opportunity to take those data, analyze it, understand it, and use it to help practices transform how they’re taking care of patients and to become proficient in the process of care delivery.