This meeting provided an opportunity to hear from Chris Belmont, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Chris discussed the MD Anderson Big Data Strategy and the cognitive computing direction. At the conclusion of his presentation, we continued our discussion of the workgroup's goal of developing a toolkit with resources and best practices regarding the utilization of data to make informed, clinical decisions at the individual and population levels.

Observations gathered from interviews of users of healthcare data analytics.

An exploration on the need for comprehensive enterprise information management and analytic capabilities to reduce costs and improve the quality of care.

Cloud services have rapidly changed the nature of data management across industries. In healthcare, organizations are increasingly deploying cloud-based solutions to capture, store, and analyze clinical data. Although implementation of the cloud entails new ways of thinking about governance, technical integration, and security, cloud technologies can contribute to significant improvements in operational flexibility while reducing costs. This webinar explores the role of the cloud in transforming healthcare processes. Panelists will describe why their organizations chose to implement cloud technologies, how they developed governance and security policies to protect data in the cloud, and the impact of the cloud on the enterprise. Speakers include:

Great Lakes Health Connect Executive Director Doug Dietzman addressed eHI’s Council of Data Analytics on the potential of data to meet specific needs across the healthcare spectrum. He spoke on the importance of integrating behavioral health and physical health into a single data stream, granting the provider a picture of the whole person. During the discussion Doug spoke to the work that GLHC is doing to help the citizens of Flint by leveraging their ability to analyze massive quantities of data to assist in relief efforts.

One of the top priorities for CIOs today is capitalizing on the explosion of data volumes and complex data types available to their organizations today. While many are considering big data for its agility and cost advantages, they are questioning how best to leverage this still nascent technology.

The Wellport HIE in a rural area of Northeast Massachusetts provides a repository of data for almost 260,000 patients. Data feeds to the repository come from labs, SureScripts, hospitals, and physician practices. Clinicians can access this data through a portal. The patient data displays in a timeline format. The clinician can click on any appointment on the timeline and open an actual progress note. The note can be attached along with others to a Direct message to themselves, the patient, or another clinician or institution. Wellport also provides a patient portal where the patient can view and send their data, update their demographics, and request appointments, prescription refills or send a message to their clinician. Over 9,600 patients have opted in to use the system. Wellport also extracts performance measures from its database for Beth Israel Deaconess Health Care affiliated physicians and relays them for analytics.

Healthshare Exchange of Southeastern Pennsylvania (HSX) has implemented an automated care team finder that allows a hospital to find the patient’s primary care doctor using a directory of Direct addresses. The automated care team finder uses the patient’s member identification with his or her healthcare insurer to identify providers involved in the patient’s recent medical care. The identified providers receive C-CDA documents with emergency department and inpatient discharge summaries using Direct Secure Messaging. HSX has sent over 70,000 discharge summaries using this method with 51 percent of these documents sent to providers across health systems.