What is a Learning Health System?

In 2006, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened a Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine to explore innovative strategies for improving health care. IOM’s guiding principle was that medical decision-making and health care systems should be “grounded on a reliable evidence base,” “account for individual variation in patient needs,” and facilitate “the generation of new insights on clinical effectiveness.

To realize these goals, the IOM experts envisioned implementing learning health systems (LHS), which would be built to enable “continuous improvement and innovation, with best practices seamlessly embedded in the delivery process and new knowledge captured as an integral by product of the delivery experience. LHS aim to integrate research, improvement, management, and patient care such that every patient receives “the right care at the right time...every time. Critical to a successful LHS is the integration of all stakeholders that utilize and interact with the system, in its construction and implementation. This includes patients, families, medical providers, administrators, representatives from supporting industries, and policymakers.