Insights

UST partners with HLTH Techquity for Health Coalition Advisory Committee in research efforts

Embarking on efforts to understand and improve techquity

More than two years ago, when the HLTH Foundation (a non-profit promoting equity, inclusion and opportunity in healthcare) partnered with Ipsos (a global market research and advisory firm), they began taking early steps to understand better how healthcare leaders are incorporating health equity in an age where technology is being rapidly deployed in the healthcare setting.

As they progressed in their work, key industry members came forward and expressed interest in taking part in their efforts. By March 2023, the Techquity for Health Coalition Advisory Committee formed with leaders from across the industry, focusing on a future with easily accessible digital health tools that have been designed with all needs in mind for the betterment of the health of all people.

UST is among the 18 organizations that joined the coalition in 2023. We believe their statement of purpose - alleviating health disparities and addressing system inequities to build a healthcare system that works better for everyone - aligns with our own. We are dedicated to educating ourselves about inequities in the health tech space and to working alongside our peers to assimilate health equity into healthcare technology innovation and data practices.

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Steps toward benchmarking

In early 2023, coalition members launched a first-of-its-kind benchmarking survey to find out what the healthcare sector currently knows and is doing about equity in the design and deployment of health tech. The coalition, and therefore the survey itself, realizes that techquity is a broad and complex topic. Initial findings are meant to help guide future conversations and to promote awareness.

Four main objectives guided this survey:

• Understand the current level of awareness of techquity, as well as the perceived importance and urgency on the topics of equity, health equity and techquity.
• Explore the depths to which healthcare organizations are currently integrating techquity into their strategies.
• Identify the steps healthcare organizations are taking to advance techquity and how to measure it.
• Gauge the confidence levels healthcare organizations have in their abilities to move toward techquity.

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Survey highlights

By March 2023, 212 industry leaders participated in the survey. Of them, 45 percent worked for technology organizations, 41 percent in clinical care organizations, and the remaining 13 percent came from other organizations, including nonprofits, academia, patient advocacy and community-based organizations. From their feedback, we learned:

1. Techquity is an easy-to-understand concept, but it’s harder to put into action.
2. About half of the industry sees techquity as “extremely” important, but other industry challenges are more urgent.
3. While roughly two-thirds of respondents are trying to address equity/health equity/techquity, the rest say they lack the necessary knowledge, commitment or resources.
4. Many organizations rely on one initiative, such as supporting Medicare/Medicaid, and rural and BIPOC communities.
5. Popular techquity-focused tactics include community-based partnerships, increased health tech user-friendliness, and enhanced digital and health literacy.
6. Success is difficult to measure, and most respondents recognize that current measurements/metrics are not fully effective.
7. More than half of the respondents agreed that an economic recession would significantly impact techquity investments.
8. More leaders and champions for equity and techquity are needed, particularly those with expansive decision-making authority.
9. While the industry’s techquity efforts are positive overall, additional metrics, better patient feedback mechanisms, and incentivization of efforts are needed.
10. The industry lacks confidence in generating an understanding of underserved patient needs and using that info to address potential health disparities.

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Four pillars to address techquity

Ultimately, survey data helped the coalition define four key pillars to address techquity. They are:

Trust in healthcare: In addition to establishing community partnerships, including partnerships with underserved and marginalized groups, the coalition hopes to build overall trust in the healthcare system by working to eliminate bias and stigma in tech design and data practices.

Access to health tech: Increasing affordable individual access to digital tools and technologies in the healthcare space is crucial to reaching techquity.

Initial use or adoption of health tech: Making the first interaction with health tech user-friendly increases the likelihood that users will follow through. Intentional design and integration of features that improve user-friendliness include multiple language options and accessibility features for people with disabilities.

Sustained engagement with health tech: Reaching techquity means reaching a long-term engagement with health tech through factors such as consideration of patient goals and lifestyles in user-centric design, and understanding and incorporating varying levels of health and digital literacy.

In addition to these pillars, we also need to discuss potential human error in our framework. As we increasingly look to technology to solve problems in healthcare, we must note that health tech relies on human data input, opening pathways to both human error and systemic inequities and biases. As we move forward, we must consider that a defined healthcare practice in techquity must incorporate all these principles.

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Next steps

As the HLTH Foundation hypothesized in 2022, the survey demonstrated many opportunities for improvement. UST joins the coalition, hoping these findings will serve as a call to action for healthcare leaders. As such, we have renewed our participation in 2024.

At UST, we are working with an ecosystem of partners to help healthcare organizations in their health equity initiatives. Taking the key highlights we learned from the survey, we offer an AI-driven Health Equity Solution that drives equitable and improved health outcomes.

UST’s solution helps payers embrace health equity by design, helps providers unlock shared savings through whole-person care, and helps pharma improve adherence and access while removing bias. Solution highlights include:

• Normalizing SDOH (social determinants of health) data to be incorporated into member population health data.
• Helping health plans identify and bring to the surface health disparities and effectively design interventions for those disparities.
• Connecting health plans to local community-based organizations to help members meet social needs that contribute to health, such as food and transportation.

The survey results have given us much to discuss as we move toward techquity. At UST, we continue to actively seek creative ways and novel partnerships to help bridge existing health equity gaps. Our involvement with the Techquity for Health Coalition Advisory Committee allows us to be at the forefront of this conversation.