Repeatable enhancement of healthcare data with social determinants of health

Background: Social and behavioral aspects of our lives significantly impact our health, yet minimal social determinants of health (SDOH) data elements are collected in the healthcare system.

Methods: In this proof-of-concept study we developed a repeatable SDOH enrichment and integration process to incorporate dynamically evolving SDOH domain concepts from consumers into clinical data. This process included SDOH mapping, linking compiled consumer data to patient records in Electronic Health Records, data quality analysis and preprocessing, and storage.

Results: Consumer compilers data coverage ranged from ~90 to ~54% and the percentage match rate between compilers was between ~21 and 64%. Our preliminary analysis showed that apart from demographic factors, several SDOH factors like home-ownership, marital-status, presence of children, number of members per household, economic stability and education were significantly different between the COVID-19 positive and negative patient groups while estimated family-income and home market-value were not.

Conclusion: Our preliminary analysis shows commercial consumer data can be a viable source of SDOH factor at an individual-level for clinical data thus providing a path for clinicians to improve patient treatment and care.