Analytic Tools

At a June 2021 AcademyHealth workshop, supported by Blue Shield of California Foundation, public health officials shared their on-the-ground experiences of using disadvantage indices to locate COVID-19 testing sites, allocate vaccines, set up vaccination sites, and conduct community outreach to overcome vaccine hesitancy.

This introductory seminar explored effective search, communication, and dissemination strategies and provided an overview of resources publicly available through the National Library of Medicine for public health and health services and policy researchers to use in their work.

Greg Downing, AcademyHealth senior scholar in residence and Founder of Innovation Horizons, LLC, outlines recent policy directives related to artificial intelligence, shares digital health and health policy experts’ perspectives on them, and highlights key takeaways for health care policymakers and researchers.

Susan Mbawuike of MITRE, an AcademyHealth organizational affiliate, shares perspectives on applying digital health tools to help patients engage in their health, expanding on discussions at the 2018 Health Datapalooza and Annual Research Meeting.

The holy grail in health care is not fancier technology and tools, it is physician and patient behavior change. Machine learning will truly come of age when it can improve the decision-making of clinicians and patients or improve their efficiency in carrying out the actions that follow from those decisions.