Data-based decisions have never been more vital to healthcare providers than they are now in the fight to help a growing number of coronavirus COVID-19 patients.

The ability to convert data into action and make the right decisions quickly at the point of care is mission-critical and can truly mean the difference between life and death. What we’re seeing now is organizations pulling together with the strength of technology to understand populations, and rapidly change direction to meet this challenge.

As a technology company, we have focused on data, population health and outcomes in Israel for more than 20 years across our product sets. Now, internal teams are working around the clock to adapt and improve our solutions to help combat a public health threat that is affecting every one of us.

Israel is an excellent example of the benefits of a connected community of health. There, health data from the country’s entire 8.7 million population is connected no matter the EHR provider or care setting via one solution: Allscripts dbMotion^TM Solution.

The dbMotion Solution, part of our CareInMotion population health management platform, is a proven open interoperability platform. It enables organizations to integrate patient data from diverse care settings, such as health and social care, regardless of IT supplier, into a single longitudinal patient record.

The technology compiles a view-only patient record in less than 10 seconds, freeing physicians to focus on patient care.

We are involved in several major efforts in Israel right now that will have long-term positive impacts on the patient population there:

• ACCESS: All 11 Ministry of Health district physician leaders and 50 health organizations across the country are connected to the nationwide network powered by dbMotion to enable improved epidemiologic research. These powerful connections mean Israel’s healthcare community will be able to make early, accurate predictions about the disease’s spread and, if it should happen, any re-emergence once the current wave subsides.
• INDICATION: Because the entire country is connected to the same database, healthcare providers receive immediate results if a patient with the virus presents — no matter the care environment. There are no phone calls or FAXes to obtain the information.
• SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH: Israel is going to create dedicated hospitals for COVID-19-positive patients. The dbMotion solution will be their single source of truth. Caregivers at the temporary hospitals will be able to see all patient medical histories without standing up new IT infrastructure.
• RESEARCH: On March 31, fewer than five days after requested by the Israel Ministry of Health, our services and development teams presented a demo of a new process developed specifically for COVID-19 crisis data collection. This process collects all the clinical and demographic data on positively diagnosed COVID-19 patients across the country, completely relying on the dbMotion platform with its advanced semantic framework. The data will be analyzed by MOH professionals and serve as significant input for their ongoing decision-making for actions to overcome pandemic.

Israel built a huge wealth of data over the last 20 years. Now that the entire country has access to the information, providers can rapidly deploy that data to solve pressing matters like COVID-19.

All of us working in healthcare have the opportunity do something significant and inspiring in this time. We’re glad to do our part, and Israel is a terrific example where technology and humanity come together.