Medical risk assessments part of new BI platform
Information Management Online, by Gary Baldwin, September 20, 2010
September 20, 2010 - BI reports generated within health care usually are retrospective looks at cumulative data. But what if BI could be used to actually predict patient outcomes and risks, and steer clinicians to steps to provide even better care?
That's the question that Novant Health, a nine-hospital delivery system based in Winston-Salem, N.C., hopes to answer. For the last decade, Novant has been using data mining and analysis tools from MEDai. The health system has compiled benchmark data for 50 distinct disease states, says Jim Lederer, M.D., vice president of clinical improvement.
"Our data is great, and helps us identify opportunities to improve care," he says. "But a better step would be predicting patient experience before it happened, rather than evaluating it after it happened."
Toward that goal, Novant is an alpha site development partner with MEDai on a BI platform called "PinPoint Review." Using the tool, clinicians at Novant will be provided a list of patients ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 for their risk of certain outcomes, including hospital readmission and the development of pressure ulcers during a current stay.
The amount of data needed to create such predictive scorecards is huge, Lederer says. "From tens to hundreds of thousands of HL7 messages every hour," he estimates. The data, which might include lab results, vital signs, and X-ray reports, goes to MEDai in a real-time data feed, run through an artificial intelligence processor, and then returns to Novant in the form of a predictive scorecard.
The system, Lederer says, would not replace clinician judgment, nor would it necessarily be foolproof.
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