It’s called big data – according to a story by Brie Zeltner – large databases of electronic medical records (EMR) that, at least theoretically, provide doctors access to huge amounts of anonymous patient data, then analyze and aggregate that information to allow large-scale population studies without the cost and hassle of patient recruitment, review boards and staff training.
A team of data experts at MetroHealth Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic Innovations spin-off company Explorys have, in just three months, replicated a major medical study that took a Norwegian team 14 years to research and report.
“And they've done it at a fraction of the cost, with a sample about 40 times as large,” Zeltner reported.
Explorys began collecting the records – 14 million, gathered from 12 major health systems – in many different formats, onto a single platform in 2009, with the intention of standardizing the records in a safe and secure environment so they could be used for patient care and research, Dr. Anil Jain, senior VP and chief medical information officer at Explorys, told Zeltner.
But the team, led by MetroHealth chief medical informatics officer David Kaelber, M.D., found that as they talked to people outside their circle of highly data-educated peers, most did not understand the vast potential of a "platform" like Explorys for research.
Zeltner wrote that Kaelber realized he needed to prove its power, speed and cost-effectiveness first, and that he could attain exactly the same results as traditional research studies that required more time and resources.
He did it with a 1994 study that took 13 years to be completed, of a Norwegian population’s heart disease risk. Kaelber and the Explorys team replicated the study in just three months, gathering and analyzing all the data, to come up with the same conclusion.
Other healthcare systems are excited about big data too. IBM and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center partnered in March to create a tool that rapidly processes information from a variety of sources, allowing doctors to be able to provide individualized cancer treatment options and diagnoses for patients after slicing and dicing that data.
But Kaelber isn’t just excited about what EMRs can do for big data, according to a story by Diane Suchetka. He found late last year that using them can also stop the duplication of expensive, invasive tests – even sometimes change a protocol – by allowing doctors to hook up with each other on the same patient.
Edited by
Braden Becker
