Intermountain Healthcare has announced a new collaboration with Israeli healthcare IT company MDClone to increase caregivers' ability to transform data into information they can use to help people lead the healthiest lives possible.
As part of this new collaboration, MDClone will share a new approach to healthcare data access, analytics, and research with Intermountain.
Intermountain has long been at the forefront of digital health innovation. The new partnership will further transform its existing rich data sources into more meaningful information that will enable caregivers to deliver the best care possible to patients.
The critical part of the process will involve loading Intermountain Healthcare's data into MDClone's Sandbox within the walls of Intermountain, then evaluating the data longitudinally -- looking at the patients' complete medical histories from start to finish in one place -- to understand critical decision points in a patient's care.
MDClone's Sandbox includes unique safeguards to protect patient privacy that produce synthetic data without risk of exposing patient identity. Altogether, the system allows caregivers within Intermountain to ask and answer important questions on demand to better manage patients while protecting patient privacy.
"We're proud to continue fostering digital health innovation in this exciting partnership with MDClone," said Mike Phillips, MD, managing director of Intermountain Ventures. "Gathering good patient data is essential to our mission, but the key is unlocking it to pull out the most meaningful information and applying it in ways that bring value to the caregiver, the health system, and most importantly, the patient. This collaboration will help us do just that."
Ziv Ofek, CEO of MDClone, added: "As we unlock healthcare data, we have an endless potential to learn. Our mission at MDClone, however, doesn't end there, which is why we're thrilled to begin working with Intermountain, one of the country's most innovative health systems. With the expertise from Intermountain's teams, we'll unlock its vast data and turn that data into insights and ultimately into higher-quality and lower-cost patient care in Utah and beyond."
As chronic and acute conditions continue to drive up the cost of healthcare for many patients, Intermountain and MDClone have already identified several clinical priorities that will enhance patient care and reduce treatment costs.
Examples include chronic heart failure, kidney disease, and stroke care. The first focus of the Intermountain/MDClone collaboration will explore kidney disease and end-stage renal disease, which can cost the average patient $250,000 a year or more.
This effort will allow Intermountain to leverage MDClone's ability to analyze medical records over the short- and long-term to identify groups of patients with all stages of kidney disease with the ultimate goal of treating and preventing their progression to end-stage renal disease.
"Not only will this help us keep patients healthier by identifying diseases before they advance, but it will also spare them the burdensome costs of treating those conditions as they progressively worsen," said Titte R. Srinivas, MD, a nephrologist in the Intermountain Transplant Clinic.
"We look forward to the opportunity to engage this approach to keep our patients healthier in partnership with MDClone," he said. "This technology will help us to identify trends and key decision points in treating kidney disease and apply that knowledge to help prevent patients from progressing to end-stage renal disease. It's a game-changer for the delivery of safer, more cost-effective, higher-quality care."
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About Intermountain Healthcare
Intermountain Healthcare is a Utah-based, not-for-profit system of 23 hospitals, 170 clinics, a Medical Group with 1,500 employed physicians, a health plans division called SelectHealth, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is widely recognized as a leader in clinical quality improvement and in efficient healthcare delivery.
About MDClone
MDClone unlocks healthcare data, enabling limitless exploration, discovery and collaboration. With MDClone's synthetic data, on-demand access to data with zero-risk to patient privacy is now possible, and its Healthcare Data Sandbox is the groundbreaking environment which connects anyone across the healthcare ecosystem to the data and insights needed to transform care. Founded by industry veterans, MDClone is based in Israel with offices in the U.S. and Europe.