HDUs can provide health departments critical information to respond proactively to emergencies, public health risks, and equity focused use cases. They also address many contemporary concerns around data sharing, such as transparency around governance and ensuring the access and use of data serves the public good.
Most public health practitioners are familiar with Health Information Exchanges or HIEs, which enable the secure use and disclosure of electronic health information among health care providers, patients, and other entities. Less familiar to many in the field are health data utilities or HDUs, which have the potential to significantly, and positively, impact public health practice. This article will provide a brief overview of health data utilities, summarize the on-going efforts to define this model of data sharing (including degrees of maturity and capability) and highlight a few states that are moving this work forward.
The Consortium for State and Regional Interoperability (CSRI) defines an HDU as a “not-for-profit organization with information exchange at its core and multi-stakeholder governance which, through its mission and function, seeks to meet the comprehensive health data delivery and analytics needs of a state’s public and private sectors.” CSRI positions HDUs as entities serving the public good, rather than purely market intermediaries. CSRI further explains that health data utilities promote statewide connectivity for health and health-related data. While HDUs may be lightly regulated, they often have rigorous and transparent data governance and seek to provide appropriate and secure access to a range of partners, including the private health care sector, payers, public health and other state agencies, researchers, and patients.
