Working with partners

Building capability in order — not starting with AI

Most engagements with county and public health partners start with getting data in one place and governed — not with AI. The sequence below is how capability areas typically get built over time: foundation first, visible reporting and equity analysis next, and AI-assisted workflows once there is infrastructure worth automating.

Foundation Visible value Capstone

Capability build sequence

  1. Foundation

    Unified data layer

    Refresh and link data across the systems you already use — EHR extracts, HMIS, Medicaid, vital records, program databases — so staff are not reconciling spreadsheets before every analysis. This is the base everything else sits on.

    Cross-system linkage case study →

  2. Foundation

    Data governance

    Document who can access what, how data is classified, and what can leave the organization — data use agreements, suppression rules, and audit trails that make multi-partner work defensible to leadership and legal review.

    Governance in the HTAC pipeline →

  3. Visible value

    Living dashboards

    Replace static, point-in-time reports with dashboards and maps that update as new data arrives — something program staff and leadership can check without filing a ticket to analytics.

    Redlining & health map case study →

  4. Visible value

    Equity & estimation

    Analysis that reaches populations standard surveillance misses — small-area equity mapping, literature-informed burden estimates, CHNA-ready packages — so resource decisions are not driven only by what is easy to count.

    Homelessness burden case study → Redlining & health →

  5. Capstone

    AI-assisted workflows

    Automations and assisted workflows built on governed, linked data — grant drafting support, anomaly flagging, natural-language query over approved datasets — not a chatbot bolted onto messy sources. This comes last because it depends on the foundation above.

    Discuss AI-assisted work →

Not the same as our project process

This page describes what gets built over time for a partner organization. Our internal delivery process — assess, design, implement, publish — is how we run individual projects within any stage. You can see that process on the homepage.

Technical reference: FHIR in the EHR lifecycle

Where FHIR and USCDI apply at each stage of the national clinical data path — from point-of-care capture through exchange networks to public health, payer, and research use.

EHR data lifecycle & FHIR map →

Start a conversation

Tell us where you are in this sequence and what you are trying to build next.