Becoming a learning health system: Designing and implementing a patient-centred clinical intervention

An increasing number of healthcare systems embrace the concept of becoming learning health systems, particularly in response to pressure from payers and patients to provide high-value care. Yet many healthcare systems have little experience with the continuous process of using research findings and data analysis to inform the design of interventions that can be evaluated, modified and redeployed. This paper provides one system’s experience with identifying a target patient population and determining an initial intervention that balances the interests of patients, providers and payers while also addressing numerous organisational barriers that need to be carefully navigated for successful implementation. It includes lessons learned to assist healthcare systems or providers who are interested in initiating the process of becoming learning health systems but are unsure of how to get started.