Could an Open Access model transform healthcare?

“Openness is not binary; information or processes are not open or closed. They sit on a broad continuum stretching from closed to open, based on their accessibility and responsiveness”. So concludes the latest report from the Committee for Economic Development (CED)

The not-for-profit and nonpartisan organisation has recently published a report (Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care) which examines how utilising an open access (OA) model would benefit healthcare and medical research in both the US and wider world

Comprising of business and education leaders from a wealth of backgrounds  and with donors ranging from Pfizer and GsK to Yahoo and McKinsey and company, the CED’s report helpfully defines the criteria of what they suggest constitutes ‘open’ information.

Ultimately they say it boils down to two things; the first is that information must be accessible, this means that data should be both available and free from restrictions while secondly responsiveness of that information refers to how malleable or redistributable the information is and therefore the more it can be considered ‘open’.

The report is interesting in how its findings suggest the open information will lead to benefits to healthcare systems in general as well as to the wider biomedical research field. Obviously the report has a sharp US skew, but there are global implications in there for researchers and information professionals to consider. 

For example it recommends a greater disclosure of biomed research results and calls for issues such as when and what data is made public need to be addressed. I thought the suggestion of aggregating Electronic Health Records (HER) offers a plethora of opportunity. “The aggregation of such records could facilitate the achievement of genuine ‘evidence-based’ medical system. Such records provide far richer data than clinical trials, and could serve as the basis for predictive models similar to those used in other scientific domains”, the report says.

The argument is that there will be an improvement in treatments, preventing the duplication of testing through accessibility to a patient or even a family’s medical history. Reassuringly, the report notes the ‘fundamental issues of privacy and security’ will tend to limit openness, as well they must, considering recent information security fiascos particularly on this side of the pond.

The opportunities to be had from the disclosure of research findings and the process of evaluating drugs and medical devices from greater and more responsible data-sharing will improve both care and scientific medical research. For a summary of the report, go here  or for the full version with end-notes here.