P.I.T. PARTNERSHIP
Spark Networked Improvement
Scale Studio
STAGES
Scale, Finance
Learning Health Networks (LHNs) unite patients, families, clinicians, and researchers around a shared goal: improving health through continuous learning and collaboration. Spark Networked Improvement is a collective of network leaders and partners building a connected ecosystem of LHNs that learn and improve together—promoting better outcomes for patients, caregivers, and communities. Spark builds on more than two decades of pioneering work establishing LHNs across a variety of populations and conditions.
The Challenge
Despite having world-class medical capabilities, the U.S.healthcare system still produces wide variations in outcomes, inefficiencies, inequities, and high costs, while new scientific and technological advances spread far too slowly. The problem isn’t innovation—it’s fragmentation, limited capacity, and the missed opportunity to engage all stakeholders as co-producers of care and improvement. Hospitals, payers, clinicians, and researchers often work in silos, pursuing separate goals with minimal shared learning. The gap between “what is” and “what could be” remains large.
Progress depends not only on technology but on new ways of working together to achieve better, more equitable health for all. LHNs demonstrate this potential—public-good models that organize collaboration, data, and shared learning across boundaries. LHNs have improved remission rates for chronic illness, enhanced safety, and shown that collective learning can drive transformation. The challenge now is to spread this capability broadly: catalyzing growth of shared knowledge, capacity, and infrastructure—from common data platforms and legal templates to sustainable funding models—so more communities can form networks and accelerate improvement.
The Approach
Spark Networked Improvement and Digitalis Commons are partnering to chart a new course. Together, we are designing sustainable systems and infrastructures to make it easier for new networks to form and thrive. This includes shared infrastructure, governance frameworks, and funding strategies that lower barriers to entry for communities ready to work together. The partnership will blend the grassroots experience of existing networks with Digitalis Commons’ expertise in design, business modeling, and sustainability planning. Our shared goal is to make the tools, processes, and structures of LHNs accessible to all who seek to improve health through action-oriented collaboration.
The Solution
By scaling this model, breakthroughs achieved within individual networks can become the standard across healthcare—turning today’s isolated successes into a system of shared progress. This partnership represents a step toward a true learning health ecosystem—one where every community can access the tools, data, and collaboration needed to improve outcomes faster and more durably.
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