You can’t have good analytics or artificial intelligence (AI) without good data, and you can’t have good data without good data governance.
This was among the main takeaways at a virtual event Mathematica convened on data governance in health care. On Tuesday, June 25, Mathematica Data Innovations Director Ngan MacDonald hosted a conversation with her colleague, director of solutions leadership and cybersecurity expert Shenita Freeman, and Walgreens Boots Alliance Senior Director of Data Governance and Architecture Mike Jennings, an internationally recognized expert in data management. Their conversation included what data governance means in relation to AI and why it is important for unlocking insights in health care.
Freeman and Jennings both explained that privacy and security concerns must be balanced with the need for high-quality data that can inform health analytics and lead to AI solutions that improve health outcomes. Here are some highlights from the conversation:
- Balancing privacy and security while improving health outcomes is critical. Freeman observed that protecting the privacy and security of data that has already been distributed, shared, sold, or used in some other manner presented a challenge that will play a significant role in future health outcomes.“There should be more focus in figuring out what happens to all the data that we currently think has no personally identifiable value and rethink what that means as it gets commingled with other data sources and is accessible by tools like AI,” she said. Jennings also emphasized that each use case presents its own unique privacy concerns.
- Data governance in health is more important than ever. Freeman acknowledged that while other industries have been able to hone and analyze their data efficiently, the health care sector has struggled in this regard. According to Freeman, the solution to this problem starts with cataloging and taking stock of all our data, and “documenting in a meaningful and accessible way so that we can capture our metadata to track ownership, provenance, and lineage.” Jennings added that from a private sector perspective, it is crucial to understand and abide by state privacy laws and to keep the pharmacy and retail spaces separate. “This includes ensuring that the right people have the right access to the data that they need to do their jobs—and for no other reason,” said Jennings.
- The public and private sectors can work together to improve data governance in health. According to Freeman, there “needs to be a realization that the public sector needs help, from workforce to advanced technology, so they have more time and space to think” about how to best approach governance and with whom to partner on data governance efforts. Jennings added that public-private collaboration that fosters understanding of each sector’s challenges would lead to better data usage between the two sectors.
View a recording of the full conversation above and learn more about Mathematica’s Health Data Innovation Lab.
