The following are key points to remember from this 2017 Roadmap for Innovation—American College of Cardiology (ACC) Health Policy Statement on Healthcare Transformation in the Era of Digital Health, Big Data, and Precision Health:

1. In 2016, the ACC convened an inaugural Innovation in Cardiovascular Care Summit to provide a framework for determining how the advances in three evolving healthcare arenas – 1) digital health, 2) big data, and 3) precision medicine – can meaningfully transform the delivery of healthcare. The summit members were tasked with identifying the objectives and tasks for the implementation of new healthcare innovations within patient care and research, creating a “roadmap for innovation” that leverages the strategic operational and governance principles within the ACC.
2. Healthcare transformation should be based on human-centered design principles, which include: 1) methods for identifying high-priority clinical problems to solve; 2) facilitating meaningful communication and information exchange; 3) improving the relationship between patient, caregiver, and physician; 4) streamlining healthcare resources and information technology infrastructures; and 5) promoting cultural empowerment. Accelerating healthcare innovation includes developing new methods for data transparency and data sharing for patients and practitioners, recognizing the role of patients as “partners” in new technology-enabled models of shared care, moving from episodic care to virtual and remote monitoring, and utilizing “big data” and data analytics in next-generation learning health systems to improve clinical workflows.
3. The ACC Roadmap for Innovation harnesses an “Innovation Collaborative” between key stakeholders that allows early phase ideas to grow into scalable solutions, facilitates new stakeholder partnerships, promotes collaborative efforts to identify unmet clinical needs, and implements new ideas.
4. Evaluation of healthcare innovations includes: 1) continuous identification, evaluation, and dissemination of stakeholders’ top priorities; 2) collation and synthesis of the evidence in digital health, big data, and precision medicine; and 3) horizon scanning to gather and share information on emerging devices, data analytics, and precision medicine approaches that have the greatest applicability for research and patient care.
5. The ACC has created an interdisciplinary Healthcare Innovation Member Workgroup to serve as a professional resource for those members and affiliates with an interest in healthcare innovation. This workgroup is an interactive community within the ACC with a focus on career development and fellows-in-training, participates in a continuous process of identifying the key domains of healthcare innovation and the “state-of-the-science,” and provides key input for ACC leadership in the next phase of healthcare transformation.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Caregivers, Cell Phone, Delivery of Health Care, Fellowships and Scholarships, Health Information Systems, Information Dissemination, Leadership, Patient Care, Privacy, Quality of Health Care, Research, Workflow

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