Data from primary and secondary care has the potential to enhance the accuracy of decision making in healthcare. However, due to the fragmented nature of the health system, this information is often siloed, making it difficult for clinicians to access and share with other providers.

If healthcare data across primary and secondary sectors complemented each other, it would result in more informed decision making, improve the delivery of care to patients, and open up possibilities to create accurate predictive models. By collaborating with multiple health IT partners in New Zealand including Whanganui DHB and PHOs, HealthStat and Orion Health, we were able to create a health data pool (HDP), a data store of primary healthcare records and hospital admissions data from secondary care.

The health data pool has the ability to integrate disparate systems across health sectors, which could enhance current health sector abilities to develop precision health models in the future.

Integrating, merging, and querying primary and secondary care data profiles can enable clinicians and health planners to 1) view an end-to-end patient record and assist in making informed decisions, 2) be able to conduct population health analysis and 3) develop precision health models to aid predictive and preventative health goals.

In New Zealand, the company HealthStat has a primary healthcare intelligence product that is built into software used by 95% of general practices, while Orion Health’s solutions are widely used by all 20 of New Zealand’s District Health Boards. This project saw the development of a proof of concept that will explore how Orion Health’s customers can leverage HealthStat’s intelligence tools for the benefit of secondary health providers and researchers.