Poor Data Sharing Leads to Delays in Care, Global Survey Finds

Healthcare providers are struggling to use the patient data that is available to them to deliver a better standard of care, and over half of consumers in a recent survey said they have experienced delays in care due to poor data sharing between healthcare professionals.

The “Consumer Connectivity Insights 2018” survey from MuleSoft, a San Francisco-based provider of a platform for building application networks, included more than 8,000 consumers globally to analyze whether organizations are meeting customer expectations for a connected, personalized experience across industries and geographies.

One key finding was that poor data utilization is impacting patient care. Digging deeper, the results showed:

• Half of consumers (51 percent) say they, or someone they know, have experienced a delay in care due to information not being shared between healthcare professionals.
• Less than half (42 percent) of consumers believe that healthcare providers make effective use of all the data (e.g. from wearable tech and health apps) available to them to deliver a better standard of care.
• The research revealed that consumers in the U.S. (54 percent) and Singapore (62 percent) were most positive when it came to healthcare providers making effective use of the data available to them. In contrast, U.K. consumers (26 percent) were by far the least positive.

And looking beyond just healthcare to government services more broadly, the research revealed that two-thirds (66 percent) of consumers believe government services provide a disconnected experience. This is ahead of insurance providers (58 percent), retailers (56 percent) and banks (55 percent).

“The Consumer Connectivity Insights 2018 report shows data sharing is a challenge, irrespective of whether care is being delivered by a public or private healthcare provider. Unfortunately, the lack of effective integration and efficient data sharing methods is impacting patient care. As a result, operations could be cancelled or test results could be delayed due to patient data being inaccessible or systems not being connected,” David Chao, head of industry solutions, MuleSoft, said in a statement that accompanied the survey results. “At a time when consumers have more health data than ever available to them via wearables and health apps, healthcare providers are struggling to keep up with access to critical information. Healthcare providers need to prioritize integrating both existing and new data sources in an application network to deliver a more connected patient experience.”