Data Equity
Working to ensure all older adults benefit from representative, inclusive, and diverse data sets and emerging healthcare technologies.
The Problem
As healthcare technology continues to rapidly advance, with it comes both compelling opportunity and risk to perpetuate the very problems it aims to solve. Data on older adults remains systematically excluded from the data sets used by AI and other technology innovation. Incomplete datasets, as well as underlying biases in datasets, become amplified in healthcare algorithms and technologies, leading to worse outcomes for marginalized populations.
We are already seeing how these issues can perpetuate inequities in health and social care, including denials of needed care, and delayed or inappropriate care that hits our priority populations the most.
Inadequate data on marginalized populations impedes our ability to understand inequities and evaluate interventions.
Bias in the application and use of data is deepening historical inequalities.
The Opportunity
We must create the conditions for healthcare players to compete on equity to ensure that emerging technologies uplift marginalized populations and accelerate – rather than impede – our path towards equity in healthcare.
We invest in research and solutions that enhance the quality and availability of data and data-dependent tools to improve health and social care outcomes for marginalized older adults.
Our Investments
DANDELION HEALTH
Advancing Algorithmic Equity in Healthcare for Older Adults from Underrepresented Patient Populations
Through a public-private partnership with technology innovator Dandelion Health, The SCAN Foundation aims to advance algorithmic equity for older adults, especially for historically marginalized populations. The partnership will expand Dandelion’s algorithm validation offering to include social determinants of health (SDOH) of older adults, enabling developers, health systems, and payers from acute to community care settings to create more equitable algorithms used in healthcare AI and other technology applications. This expanded offering is expected to be available in June 2024.
ROCK HEALTH
A Lens On Health Equity in Digital Health: Unlocking the Innovation Opportunity
Developed with funding from The SCAN Foundation, RockHealth.org released “A Lens on Health Equity in Digital Health: Unlocking the Innovation Opportunity” in April 2024. This report synthesizes perspectives from industry leaders, identifying strategic avenues to drive health equity in the digital health sphere. The report also highlights underserved populations primed for digital health innovation, including older adults.
ASPEN DIGITAL
Tech Equity & Aging: Putting Older Adults at the Center of Tech Innovation
Together with Aspen Digital, the Foundation is harnessing the expertise of influential tech industry leaders, through consultations and a larger convening, to explore issues of ageism in algorithms, equitable data representation, and technology design for older adults. Through a playbook and podcast, Aspen Digital will share insights from these discussions that highlight recommendations for different players in technology to act on in support of older adult consumers.