2022 LEAP in Health IT Projects

Aligning Housing and Healthcare

Project Overview

For the Aligning Housing and Healthcare project, AllianceChicago will partner with Heartland Alliance Health (a Community Health Center), Chicago House (a community-based Homeless Service organization), EMI Advisors, and NORC at the University of Chicago to prototype a shared interoperable care plan. This project will leverage HL7® FHIR® and the experience and capabilities of a strong partnership to enable service providers to break down barriers to integration and coordination of services to better address social determinants of health (SDOH) for individuals experiencing homelessness. This project addresses the LEAP in Health IT fiscal year 2022 area of interest 1: Address health equity and SDOH through innovative, Open-Source Technology Tools, and Electronic Health Records.

Project Dates

This project began in 2022 and is estimated to be completed in 2025.

Project Goals

The goals of this project are to:

• Understand and characterize the elements of a comprehensive care plan bridging the domains of need and services across both a Community Health Center and a Homeless Service organization,
• Co-design and pilot test a standards-based, open source, FHIR enabled electronic interoperable care plan accessible to both institutions and the patient, and
• Conduct a rigorous evaluation of the pilot and publish findings.

AllianceChicago will share experience and recommendations from the project to inform efforts to extend this work by providing feedback to standards organizations, technology developers and policy makers, as well as by providing tools, guidance and access to the developed technology to other services organizations seeking to extend in this work.

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Equity Engines

Project Overview

MedStar Health Research Institute’s Equity Engines project will develop the infrastructure and standards-based patient-generated health data (PGHD) technologies needed to demonstrate the scalable use of equity enhancing PGHD for clinical care and research from the point-of-care to the researcher. This project addresses the LEAP in Health IT fiscal year 2022 area of interest 2: Demonstrate the use of equity-enhancing PGHD for clinical care and research.

Project Dates

This project began in 2022 and completed in 2024.

Project Goals

The goals of this project are to:

• Perform an environmental scan to understand current standards and interoperability of PGHD related to the proposed PGHD technology solution.
• Develop the Equity Engine (PGHD technology solution) that collects and shares PGHD among patients, providers, and researchers around clinical care and research that require PGHD and incorporate the needs of underserved communities.
• Conduct two demonstration projects in at least two separate health care locations for at least two use cases, using the same underlying technology solution to demonstrate scalability.
• Evaluate operational utility of the novel solution to report the potential impact, opportunities, and challenges.

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