Learning Health Systems (LHS)

A Learning Health System is a unified system that harnesses information from the experiences and care of patients to iteratively inform decision-making and interventions at point of care. The hallmark of ICTR’s Learning Health System Collaboratory Platform is its architectural framework to support dyad partnerships between operational and research leaders that share common goals across the social, ethical, technical and scientific domains of health care. This platform includes support from a multi-disciplinary team of experts that include a health system engineer, a biostatistician, a clinical informatician, and a dissemination and implementation scientist.

For more information about the value a Learning Health Systems approach brings to UW and other systems, read Predictive Solutions in Learning Health Systems and Health Information Technology as a Learning Health System.

LHS activities began at UW-Madison in 2013, building on UW Health’s evidence-based quality improvement (QI) and evaluation framework.

In 2022, UW Health expanded its collaborative relationship with ICTR to advance the LHS as a new component of ICTR’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). This new component is focused on finding ways to accelerate and scale up the implementation of QI interventions that harness digital health technologies to improve acute/inpatient care delivery.

At the heart of ICTR’s LHS initiative is a multi-disciplinary, inter-professional collaborative process of building relationships, identifying and aligning priorities, and creating inter-operational workflows that facilitate clinical and translational research as well as QI.

Under ICTR’s LHS demonstration project program, Principal Investigators work in a dyad with a health system operational partner to address patient care improvement opportunities needed by the health system and implement and scale up their interventions safely and effectively. Guided by the Quintuple Aims of Healthcare, these demonstration project dyads champion the rapid deployment of proven interventions to address health system care gaps using the resources available to them in ICTR.

Our Steering Committee of multi-disciplinary UW-Madison UW–Madison and UW Health leaders and stakeholders meets regularly to prioritize project goals, ensure the strategic plan of the health system is met, and help grow a sustainable LHS.

LHS Steering Committee membership reflects the diverse disciplines that comprise ICTR’s key partners in translational and team science. From biostatistics, regulatory and legal expertise to informatics, systems engineering and implementation science, ICTR’s infrastructure of experts help guide LHS Demonstration Project teams via an array of collaborative consulting and other services.

For additional information on the LHS-Collaboratory Platform and the services offered, please visit the LHS Services page.

Angus et al. The integration of clinical trials with the practice of medicine: Repairing a house divided. JAMA. 2024 Jul 9;332(2):153-162. PMID: 38829654.

Foley, T. and Vale, L. A framework for designing, understanding, developing and evaluating a learning health system. Learn Health Sys. 2022 May 20;7;e10315. PMID: 36654802.