How to make health systems into learning organizations

A health system becomes a learning system when it's able to continuously study its own performance and put that knowledge to work to improve itself. In a new report, investigators describe how Johns Hopkins Medicine is working to enhance the value of healthcare it provides while expanding its ability to measure and analyze quality, safety, and other important variables.

Their model is driven by a patient‐oriented purpose, and it aligns the goals and strengths of a diverse set of stakeholders, including clinicians, patients, researchers, and administrators toward a common goal.

"The pathways of scientific discovery and improvement often have a prescribed beginning, but their destinations continue to evolve. The journey to creating a learning and improving health system similarly should not end when early goals are reached but rather build upon early milestones and evolve to address the challenges that lie ahead," wrote the authors of the Learning Health Systems report.