IBM, Premier Partner On Accountable Care Analytics PlatformIBM, Premier Partner On Accountable Care Analytics Platform

Health IT Boosts Patient Care, Safety

IBM and the Premier healthcare alliance announced Thursday plans to develop a health information platform that integrates clinical, administrative, and financial data. The initiative will enable doctors and other medical providers to measure performance and improve population health at more than 2,400 hospitals and thousands of other healthcare sites that are members of the Premier system.

According to both companies, the platform will provide the healthcare industry with its first data-sharing model for hospitals, doctors, and outpatient clinics to support accountable care and performance improvements.

Premier's clinical, financial, and operational comparative database is the nation's largest compilation of inpatient data, containing nearly 40% of all U.S. hospital discharges, both companies said in a joint statement. Other non-hospital data that reside at physician practices and other ambulatory settings, as well as health plan data, will also be incorporated.

This includes clinical data regarding how care was delivered and related outcomes; supply chain data that incorporates clinical outcomes with costs; and operational data regarding labor efficiency and overall operating costs.

"IBM wanted to partner with a market leader on the project so Premier was the logical choice," Ed Macko, IBM's healthcare CTO, told information. "Due to its size, Premier was the ideal partner to truly drive this type of transformation across the entire healthcare ecosystem. Jointly we can help set the standards of the healthcare industry."

Macko explained that IBM has spent many years building analytics platforms for some of the nation's largest hospital systems, something that is expensive, time-consuming, and complex. He also said every hospital needs an analytics platform to aggregate data across its multiple disparate IT systems and that IBM is pushing ahead with its business strategy to provide analytics platforms to hospitals as they move from paper-based systems to digitized medical records.

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"Our goal is to help hospitals, clinics, and other providers deploy analytics in a more accelerated and integrated fashion. In doing so, providers can solve one of the healthcare industry's biggest problems by providing access to hospital data from across different domains, such as clinical, operational, and financial data, to help lower the cost of care," IBM's Macko said.

Participants in Premier's Accountable Care Implementation Collaborative will leverage the model to exchange data. The collaborative is currently composed of 25 health systems with more than 90 hospitals and 5,000 physicians providing care for 1.4 million patients across 19 states. Premier will extend these capabilities to its more than 2,400 member hospitals and 70,000-plus other care sites beginning in spring 2011.

The IBM and Premier healthcare alliance platform is powered by IBM Smarter Analytics System with the DB2 data warehouse. The IBM information management portfolio is used to acquire, transform, and create a single view of each constituent or entity. Master data management, identity resolution, and acquisition will be provided by Initiate Software. The data is then integrated and validated, and clinical or business rules management is applied through WebSphere.

For security and service management, the platform will use Tivoli software. Application development is built upon Rational software, and a common user experience and collaboration is provided through Lotus software. The entire system runs on IBM Power7 technology.

"For the first time, all members in the healthcare system will be able to easily access data that is consistent and unified to help reduce preventable harm and waste," said Susan DeVore, president and CEO of Premier. "This has been the missing link in helping move the mark on evidence-based medicine by using new insight to transform the quality and cost-effectiveness of care. It's a win-win-win for providers, patients, and payers -- care is more effective, people are happier and spend less time in care settings, and excess costs are reduced."