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University, Companies to Build Medical Analytics Platform

Blue gene supercomputer (ANL.gov)
(ANL.gov)

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, with four corporate technology partners, will build a comprehensive medical analytics database, integrating data from 200+ diverse research, clinical, and business sources. The two-year project is expected to cost $100 million and include the companies Oracle, IBM, Informatica, and dbMotion. Financial details of the corporate contributions were not disclosed.

The project aims to provide an analytical engine for decision making that can lead to more personalized health care outcomes for patients, better control of costs, and earlier alerts on potential public health hazards. The new systems will be based on data from more than 200 sources, both internal medical center and outside databases, such as participating labs and pharmacies. A major part of the development will involve integrating the data from these diverse sources, such as genomic, financial, administrative, and clinical records that normally are stored and consulted separately.

Oracle is providing several of its health care database and analytics systems for the project, including its Enterprise Healthcare Analytics and  Health Sciences Network, as well as its Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management system for cost-based accounting and Identity and Access Management Suite Plus to meet privacy and security requirements. Oracle says the university also plans to install the company’s Exadata Database Machine as the hardware foundation.

IBM is contributing its Healthcare Data Models and Business Analytics and Optimization software, including several analytics tools to create predictive models, combined with Cognos business intelligence tools for reporting. IBM is also providing its Initiate software as the basis for the medical center’s patient identification, to help resolve patient identity issues and improve record searches.

Informatica specializes in complex analytics from large-scale and diverse databases, a concept commonly known as Big Data. The company dbMotion develops health care data systems based on Web services for medical care providers and health information exchanges.

The first deliverables in the project aim to improve quality reporting and measurements across the medical center’s hospitals and physician offices. The outputs from these first efforts are expected to report on the effectiveness of treatments and the cost of variations in care, as well as offer predictive alerts to help improve disease prevention.

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Hat tip: MedCity News

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