Mostashari: Obama Reelection Points To Critical Role Of Data

Farzad Mostashari, MD, the national health IT coordinator, said that data and analytics played a critical role in the campaign and re-election of President Barack Obama – mirroring the growing importance of data in healthcare. 

Data and analytics have transformed marketing, campaigning, and even baseball. “How is it possible for us to imagine a world where that power of data is not brought to bear on life and death, clinical care, on population health, and affirming the path that we are on with health IT and bringing data to life?” Mostashari said in comments about his thoughts the morning after the election at the Nov. 7 meeting of the federal advisory Health IT Policy Committee.

During the campaign, the analysis of surveys, polls and computer models drew considerable discussion about whether they were going to bear out their findings and be accurate, or not. “It was something of a relief that data matters, that science matters, that predictions can be based on evidence,” he said, adding that there was also “relief in seeing a truce in data.”