A New Frontier in Telehealth Research: A National Telehealth Data Warehouse

Given the rapid increase in telehealth utilization since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become essential to examining the vast amount of available data on telehealth encounters to conduct more cogent, robust, and large-scope research studies to examine the utility, cost-impact, and effect on clinical outcomes that telehealth can potentially provide. However, the diversity of data collected by numerous telehealth organizations has made that type of analysis difficult. The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), a Telehealth Center of Excellence designated by the Health Resources and Services Administration, is creating a National Telehealth Data Warehouse. UMMC will develop the data warehouse in Microsoft Azure and will use a data dictionary that was created by the Center for Telehealth and eHealth Law (CTeL) to support their national cost-benefit study on the use of telehealth during COVID-19. The data warehouse will provide unparalleled opportunities to conduct cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses on telehealth, to develop and test quality measures specific to telehealth, and to understand how telehealth and reduce disparities in health care and expand access to care for everyone. The warehouse is expected to go live in the Summer of 2023.