By Kent Anderson and Jason Adams, MD. In November 2022, UC Davis Health achieved the prestigious Stage 6 Adoption Model for Analytics Maturity (AMAM) from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the global authority on advancing digital health transformation.
Key ingredients to our success were systemwide collaboration and the creation of a central data governance infrastructure that fostered the development of best practices in data management, analytics development, and strategic alignment across UC Davis Health.
This achievement represented nearly three years of hard work by our Innovation (yes, “Innovation”) Technology (IT) experts, clinicians, and many collaborators throughout the health system. As shown on the HIMSS AMAM Achievements site, UC Davis Health is now one of five health care systems in the United States – and only six worldwide – currently at HIMSS AMAM Stage 6. Only 10 health care systems in the U.S. have achieved Stage 7, which is the highest level of analytics maturity.
HIMSS assessed UC Davis Health on 65 criteria in the following categories:
- Data Content – growing data content used to improve operational, clinical and finalize performance
- Infrastructure – developing a strategy for sourcing data and making it available for health system use
- Data Governance – managing data assets and aligning analytics efforts with overall organizational strategy
- Analytics Competency – developing analytics resources and refining skills in a coordinated and structured effort
Central to our successful Stage 6 designation were UC Davis Health’s IT Data Center of Excellence (CoE) and Health Data Oversight Committee (Figure 1), which enabled connection of subject matter experts throughout the health system who worked together to eliminate information silos and optimize collaboration across disciplines. The IT Data CoE is comprised of three foundational cores:
- Health Computing Core – This core provides sophisticated, secure, and easy-to-use computing environments to democratize access to, protect, enable, and maximize the effective use of data.
- Data Provisioning Core – This core supports the majority of health data analysis needs at UC Davis Health through the provisioning of well-characterized health-related data and derived information to data requestors.
- Health Analytics Core – This core is organized into project-focused, cross-functional analytics teams composed of lead investigators/project champions, analysts, project managers, data scientists, and biostatisticians to ensure responsible AI/ML use within UC Davis Health.
This structure, coupled with the oversight from the Health Data Oversight Committee and subcommittees, supports the data and analytics life cycle and enables UC Davis Health to effectively use data and analytics to drive our healthcare, education, and research missions.
The IT Data CoE’s work is strategically aligned with UC Davis Health’s healthcare, education and research missions and the health system’s goals to:
- Safeguard data privacy and security
- Improve diagnosis and prediction
- Increase efficiency
- Deliver more equitable care
- Provide better patient and provider experience
- Optimize patient outcomes
We could not have received this designation without the vision and support of our Vice Chancellor of Human Health Sciences and CEO for UC Davis Health David Lubarsky, MD, CIO and Chief Digital Health Officer Ashish Atreja, MD, the UC Davis Health leadership team, and broad collaboration from the project team.
We are grateful for the invaluable, ongoing contributions of our many collaborators in this effort including experts in UC Davis Health’s Innovation Technology, Clinical Affairs, Quality and Safety, Patient Care Services, Finance, Compliance and Privacy, Operational Analytics, Population Health, Ambulatory Operations, Pharmacy, Strategy and Growth, the UC Davis schools of medicine and nursing, and many others.
The key to our future data analytics successes will be continued collaboration among our many partners across UC Davis Health who are committed to leveraging the feedback from the HIMSS Stage 6 certification process to build the roadmap to AMAM Stage 7.
As UC Davis Health strives to be more effective, efficient, and creative in how we use data and analytics, we expect that our next phase of maturity will see exciting advances in our use of artificial intelligence, automation, and implementation science methods as we strive to deliver tomorrow’s health care today.
Core Project Team from UC Davis Health IT Data CoE
- Jason Adams, MD, MS – Director, Data and Analytics Strategy; Medical Director, Data CoE; Director, Health Data Oversight Program; Associate Professor, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
- Kent Anderson, MS – Executive Director, IT Data Center of Excellence
- Rachelle Carson – Program Manager, Health Data Oversight Program
- Christopher Hilscher – Manager, Data Curation
- Michele Morris – Supervisor, Health Data Oversight Program
- Sharon Myers – Senior Health Informatics Analyst, IT Data Center of Excellence
- Jodi Nygaard – Director, Data Access and Delivery
- Timothy Obrien – Program Manager, Data Center of Excellence
- Mauricia Rilling – Project Policy Analyst, Data CoE and Data and Analytics Strategy
- Erica Sagan – Consultant, IT Data Center of Excellence
- Paing Soe – Data Architect, Data Acquisition & Architecture
- Minh Vo – Director, Data Acquisition & Architecture
About The Authors
Executive Director
UC Davis Health IT Data Center of Excellence
Director, Data and Analytics Strategy
Medical Director, UC Davis Health IT Data Center of Excellence
Director, UC Davis Health Data Oversight Program
Associate Professor, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
[Cover photo caption: Data Center of Excellence (CoE) Leadership and the HIMSS Stage 6 Assessment core team (left to right: Jodi Nygaard, Christopher Hilscher, Mauricia Rilling, Jason Adams, Minh Vo, Rachelle Carson, Paing Soe, Timothy Obrien, Michele Morris, Kent Anderson (not pictured: Sharon Myers, Erica Sagan)]