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In today’s healthcare landscape, the influence of social drivers of health (SDOH) on patient outcomes is becoming increasingly apparent. SDOH screening tools and software help providers, health systems, and payers to identify the environmental and social factors that significantly shape patient outcomes, care access, medication adherence, and healthcare costs.
Despite their critical importance, the integration of SDOH in drug development and customer engagement has often been overlooked, posing a challenge to achieving health equity and improving patient outcomes and access. Overcoming these obstacles is vital to power the product lifecycle and enable strategic decision-making.
This blog covers:
- Why social drivers of health impact outcomes, access, adherence, and costs across healthcare
- How claims and SDOH data come together to create a more complete view of populations and performance
- How life sciences teams can use SDOH insights to support trial diversity, research, and outcomes analysis
- How interactive visualizations and configurable metrics turn SDOH data into actionable strategy decisions
SDOH Market Insights: A New Era in Healthcare
Our data visualization software, SDOH Market Insights, earned the “Best Data Visualization Solution” award at the 2024 MedTech Breakthrough Awards. This solution transforms how life science companies address SDOH factors across the drug development life cycle.
Leveraging the industry’s largest primary source dataset, advanced analytics, and configurable features, SDOH Market Insights helps make reaching data-driven decisions easier.
Turning Data Into Actionable Insights
By integrating a comprehensive range of data – including claims from Medicaid, Medicare, and Commercial lines of business and enhanced with SDOH data – SDOH Market Insights provides a holistic view of patient demographics, clinical characteristics, healthcare utilization, and quality measures.
This detailed, comprehensive access to SDOH data informs the precise analysis of key performance indicators related to healthcare quality and outcomes.
The solution’s capabilities enable life sciences teams to:
- Meet clinical trial diversity requirements: Achieve diversity inclusion requirements through the analysis of deep population segmentation data and disease treatment patterns for identification of target populations
- Enhance patient health outcomes, research, and insights: Identify drivers of patient populations to inform research engagements, understand impacts of treatment, and research outcomes KPIs
- Improve treatment access and adherence: Identify the key SDOH risk factors impacting medication access and adherence, and generate actionable insights to improve customer engagement and inform a leading business strategy
SDOH Market Insights provides detailed, interactive population insights at national, state, and county levels and encompasses over 50 SDOH drivers. The granular data allows stakeholders to analyze key performance indicators related to healthcare utilization, quality measures, and patient outcomes.
Additionally, customizable configurations facilitate seamless collaboration with healthcare providers and payers, enabling tailored metrics and visualizations on patient characteristics, outcomes, utilization, and location.
Accelerating Research With Data-Driven Excellence
Leveraging the industry’s most robust primary source dataset and sophisticated analytics, SDOH Market Insights accelerates research objectives by identifying key health drivers and their impact on outcomes and quality measures.
This data-driven approach supports life science companies in developing targeted strategies to address health disparities and improve patient outcomes.
Progressing Toward a Healthier Future
Addressing the critical role of SDOH in healthcare outcomes and access is essential for achieving health equity and enhancing patient care. SDOH Market Insights represents a significant step forward in harnessing the power of data to enhance drug development and improve patient outcomes.
Learn how SDOH Market Insights supports more effective and equitable healthcare solutions, ultimately leading to better health outcomes for all.
Frequently asked questions on SDOH software
1) What are screening tools for social determinants of health (SDOH), and how are they used?
Screening forms for SDOH are structured questionnaires or assessments used to identify non-medical factors that may impact a person’s health. These factors include food insecurity, housing instability, transportation barriers, financial strain, and access to technology. Providers, health systems, payers, and community organizations use these tools to:
- Identify unmet social needs that may affect outcomes, utilization, and adherence
- Stratify risk and prioritize individuals or populations for outreach and support
- Connect patients to resources (e.g., community services, care management programs)
- Track trends over time to evaluate whether interventions are improving access and outcomes
In the life sciences context, understanding SDOH screening outputs (and the underlying risk patterns) can help teams better anticipate access barriers, adherence risks, and disparities.
2) What is Inovalon’s SDOH Market Insights solution, and what does it help life sciences teams do?
SDOH Market Insights is a data visualization and analytics solution designed to help life sciences teams understand how SDOH factors impact populations across the drug development life cycle. By combining claims data (Medicaid, Medicare, Commercial) with SDOH data, it enables teams to:
- Meet clinical trial diversity requirements by identifying target populations through deep segmentation and treatment-pattern insights
- Improve research and outcomes insights by analyzing drivers of outcomes and quality KPIs
- Enhance treatment access and adherence by identifying SDOH risk factors affecting initiation and persistence—and using those insights to inform engagement strategy
3) How does SDOH Market Insights turn data into actionable decisions and not just dashboards?
The software provides interactive population insights at national, state, and county levels and incorporates 50+ SDOH drivers, helping stakeholders move from “what’s happening” to “what to do next.” Teams can use configurable views and metrics to align with providers and payers, uncover high-risk cohorts, and prioritize interventions tied to:
- Healthcare utilization (e.g., ER visits, hospitalizations)
- Quality measures and outcomes KPIs
- Therapy access and adherence barriers (e.g., transportation, socioeconomic constraints)
4) Why has SDOH historically been overlooked in drug development and customer engagement?
SDOH can be difficult to operationalize because the data is often fragmented, inconsistent, or not linked to clinical and claims data at the right level of detail. As a result, life sciences teams may struggle to translate SDOH into actionable insights that support decisions across the product lifecycle – from trial planning through patient support and access strategy.
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