Inside Health Care #73: Dr. Shane McNamee & the Genius of the Learning Health System

February 16, 2022 · David J. Smolar

Imagine a world where all medical and patient information gets combined and processed efficiently. No matter how many doctors you’d see about a certain problem, each doctor would already have the test results and evaluations of the one before.

And the health systems themselves would automatically grab all that patient info…and use it to fix what’s broken in the patient care system.

Sounds like a lot to ask for. But our guest on Inside Health Care has an answer. It’s called a Learning Health System. And at the leading edge of developing these Learning Health Systems is self-proclaimed “health data liberator” Dr. Shane McNamee.

Dr. McNamee is Chief Medical Information Officer for Smile CDR Inc., which developed a FHIR-based platform for collecting and sharing health data. He also volunteers as Executive Director for B-P-M Plus Health. They’re a company dedicated to improving global health by accelerating best clinical practices and helping health care entities develop better workflows using data, knowledge, and process standards.

Once you hear him speak, you’ll realize that Dr. McNamee is in the right place at the right time for the health care world.

Later in the podcast, we hear from Veronica Locke, Process Consultant with the Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) in Dallas, Texas. An NCQA veteran, she served as Senior Manager of Accreditation Policy for NCQA. When it comes to quality assessment and improvement, Veronica is a content champion.

She’s here on this episode to tell us about two “tips and tricks” training seminars she’s offering in March 2022 through NCQA: one dealing with Delegation and the other with Credentialing.