Shaping the Future of Patient Empowerment and Care Delivery Through Digital Healthcare Research

Providing healthcare consumers with evidence-based insights and practical guidelines can create value for patients, their families, clinicians and healthcare systems.

At AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research (DHR) program, we deliver this value by funding projects that demonstrate how digital healthcare solutions can be designed and implemented to improve patient health outcomes and healthcare system performance. 

Our newly released 2023 year-in-review report, Improving Healthcare Through AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research, showcases AHRQ-funded studies and projects focused on digital technologies that engage and empower patients and optimize and advance care delivery—with an emphasis on improving digital healthcare equity, exploring artificial intelligence (AI), and ensuring patient safety and scalability.

In 2023, DHR funded 107 grants and contracts led by researchers at 70 institutions in 25 states and the District of Columbia. Our 2023 investment totaled $30 million. These investments led to important advancements, including:

• A team at Kaiser Foundation Hospitals is developing an emergency department triage tool, informed by machine learning, that will improve the prediction of patient illness severity and complexity, leading to safer, higher quality, and more equitable care.
• South Carolina researchers have developed and evaluated an integrated suite of electronic health record tools to automate best practices for intimate partner violence screening and intervention during primary care visits. These tools provide a private and effective screening and referral process for people experiencing or at risk of experiencing domestic violence.
• Columbia University researchers are examining the impact of displaying patient photos in electronic health records to reduce prescription errors. After confirming that using patient photos can significantly reduce wrong patient orders, the team is now developing a toolkit to support the widespread implementation of patient photos by health systems—including specifications on how to capture a quality patient photo, checklists and templates, sample policies and workflows, and training and patient education materials.

Thirteen additional stories included in the DHR program’s 2023 year-in-review further describe the breadth and depth of our pioneering efforts to advance the digital healthcare ecosystem. These stories explore potentially life-saving applications such as self-management of asthma and assessment of suicide risk, as well as technologies aimed at improving patient satisfaction and health, including the use of patient-reported outcome measures and tools to help patients understand the “Hospital at Home” model of care.

Not surprisingly, this year’s report also devotes attention to DHR’s efforts to keep pace with the accelerating advancements in AI. As AI technologies reach the healthcare field, the need for targeted research is immense. Agencies and organizations leading the development of healthcare AI best practices and policies face complex decisions with numerous implications for patient safety, health outcomes, and health equity. AHRQ’s commitment to producing evidence to inform policy and best practice recommendations is highlighted in this year’s Research Spotlight, “Going the Last Mile: Bringing Evidence to Bear on Healthcare AI Practice and Policy.” We are eager to develop and disseminate additional evidence where it can make the most difference.

As we wrap up 20 years of healthcare innovation and excellence at DHR, I am incredibly proud of not only funding digital healthcare pioneers and innovators, but also of the DHR team members who lead collaborative projects and initiatives aimed at identifying and addressing key challenges, gaps, and barriers in the field.

I can’t wait to see what the next decade holds for this program and for the groundbreaking researchers we support. 

Chris Dymek is director of AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research Program.