Abstract
Context:Sustaining electronic health data networks and maximizing return on federal investment in their development is essential for achieving national data insight goals for transforming health care. However, crossing the business model chasm from grant funding to self-sustaining viability is challenging.Case description:This paper presents lessons learned in seeking the sustainability of the Scalable Architecture for Federated Translational Inquiries Network (SAFTINet), and electronic health data network involving over 50 primary care practices in three states. SAFTINet was developed with funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to create a multi-state network for comparative effectiveness research (CER) involving safety-net patients.Methods:Three analyses were performed: (1) a product gap analysis of alternative data sources; (2) a Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threat (SWOT) analysis of SAFTINet in the context of competing alternatives; and (3) a customer discovery process involving approximately 150 SAFTINet stakeholders to identify SAFTINet’s sustaining value proposition for health services researchers, clinical data partners, and policy makers.Findings:The results of this business model analysis informed SAFTINet’s sustainability strategy. The fundamental high-level product needs were similar between the three primary customer segments: credible data, efficient and easy to use, and relevance to their daily work or ‘jobs to be done’. However, how these benefits needed to be minimally demonstrated varied by customer such that different supporting evidence was required.Major Themes:The SAFTINet experience illustrates that commercialization-readiness and business model methods can be used to identify multi-sided value propositions for sustaining electronic health data networks and their data capabilities as drivers of health care transformation.
Highlights
The number of electronic health data networks for policy-informing health services research and patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) has proliferated significantly in the United States over the past two decades [1]
They represent the competitive alternatives to SAFTINet that health services researchers, who conduct comparative effectiveness research, could select to purchase or use
The health services researchers interviewed mentioned several public data sources they routinely used, but that they found lacking for comparative effectiveness research in uninsured safety-net populations
Summary
The number of electronic health data networks for policy-informing health services research and patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) has proliferated significantly in the United States over the past two decades [1]. One of the oldest electronic research data networks is the Health Care Systems Research Network, formerly known as the HMO Research Network. This network, a national consortium of 20 research departments within health care delivery systems, began coordinating federally-funded scientific networks and studies in 1994 [2]. In 2007, the DARTNet Institute, formerly the DARTNet Collaborative, was formed in partnership with the American Academy of Family Physicians National Research Network to support practice-based research networks and serve as an umbrella organization for networks seeking to use electronic health data for comparative effectiveness research, quality, safety, and to support. The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) continued this investment awarding over $250 million in 2014 to support ongoing development, expansion, and use of PCORnet, a National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network. PCORNet is comprised of 33 individual health data networks, which include 13 clinical data research networks and 20 people-powered research networks, and two health plan research networks [6]
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