Truman Medical Centers and the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Center for Health Insights have teamed up on a new initiative that will harness data from electronic medical records, de-identifying it and digesting it into a database that can help inform better care decisions.

 

Both organizations will partner with EMR giant Cerner to leverage its Health Facts data warehouse platform to drive the analytics initiative. Health Facts extracts data from both clinical and financial IT systems, de-identifies the data, standardizes terms through mapping to common nomenclature and has the ability to create adverse drug events and outcomes reports.

 

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The platform, as Cerner officials described, will allow the two-hospital TMC to use its current clinical and financial data and transform it into a usable form that can be leveraged to improve patient safety and care outcomes. What's more, TMC officials anticipate the data analysis can also be used to reduce specific health disparities and reduce costs for certain procedures. 

 

Specifically, with the platform TMC officials will be able to use the generated reports and compare one's organization's performance with other clients who use the warehouse. The warehouse already includes millions of EMR records from inpatient, ED and outpatient visits from patients nationwide. 

 

[See also: Big data doesn't have to be 'Star Wars'.]

 

"The centerpiece of this partnership provides tools to accelerate clinical and translational research and ultimately provide better health outcomes," said Lawrence Dreyfus, UMKC vice chancellor for Research and Economic Development, in a Feb. 18 press statement. "We couldn't be more excited about the prospects that this partnership holds for healthcare decisions that ultimately improve care and reduce costs."