Transforming Health & Healthcare

ADAPTABILITY

Transforming Health and Healthcare

Building an equitable, data-driven healthcare ecosystem is a whole-of-nation undertaking. To foster a much-needed healthcare revolution, the U.S. requires a unified strategy for secure digital health. To get there, MITRE serves as a trusted adviser, working with our partners to transform health and healthcare delivery—with a focus on data sharing and interoperability.

What would a seamless system offer? Providers gain access to patient records, from a clinic around the corner to a hospital across the country. Individuals have the resources and data to take charge of their health. And the U.S. is equipped with the tools to defeat and prevent disease and promote health and well-being.

Reaching this future state means restructuring existing approaches. For example, the bulk of personal health information now lives in disconnected databases, portals, and even paper records. Providers and patients often must recreate an individual’s health picture with each interaction.

This “Groundhog Day” approach is inefficient, costly, and can lead to poor outcomes. It disproportionately impacts low-income and marginalized populations—including veterans.

Exchanging health information requires common data standards to ensure information means the same thing across systems. This compatibility is powerful. It gives clinicians accurate data and researchers the ability to analyze millions of outcomes to determine effective, patient-centered treatments across demographics.

Partnering to Promote Health

The MITRE-operated federally funded R&D center for health, a.k.a. the Health FFRDC—along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, our Health and Society Innovation Center, and other stakeholders—are tackling our nation’s most critical healthcare and public health problems. As a not-for-profit operating in the public interest, we amplify our impact through collaboration and connection, becoming a bigger force for good.

The past decade has heightened health disparities on every front: physical, mental, economic, geographic. Throughout, the Health FFRDC has been a catalyst for progress. We foster well-being from every angle: shrinking the mental wellness gap, reducing healthcare fraud, and preventing medical billing surprises—the kind that can force a choice between medications and groceries.

With Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and others, we lead and convene coalitions to take on highly complex health and healthcare challenges. Among these: improving cancer care and ensuring ethical use of AI in digital health.

MITRE’s Synthea™, a free, open-source database of realistic, but artificial, patient population data sets, fills an information gap without privacy concerns. Designated a Digital Public Good for supporting health equity, Synthea-generated data informs testing, modeling, and research.

Healthcare Where It’s Needed

MITRE’s health and healthcare advances keep patient outcomes at the center. For example, we know closing the U.S. healthcare gap requires providing services regardless of location, income, age, race, ethnicity, ability, or sexual orientation.

That means making telemedicine and remote health monitoring an option for people in rural areas and anyone facing barriers to care. It means improving care for every expectant mother to reduce the rate of maternal mortality, a number that’s three to four times higher for non-Hispanic Black women in America.

With our partners, we’re shaping the building blocks of a healthy, resilient nation. Simultaneously, we’re boosting preparedness for the next global health emergency—laying the groundwork to scale services to meet demand.