Population and Public Health

UPMC says it will take a majority interest in New York-based medCPU, become a customer of the company and also will co-develop new products to take to market. UPMC Enterprises, the commercialization arm of UPMC, has offered to purchase stock from existing non-employee medCPU shareholders, and executives expects UPMC will hold majority ownership in the privately held company when the offer is completed. [Also: Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC wins Davies Award] Also, planned for the second quarter of this year, UPMC will lead an investment round of $35 million in new capital to accelerate expansion of medCPU. Existing medCPU shareholder Merck Global Health Innovation Fund is also participating in this round. “Our partnership with medCPU will provide UPMC with technology and solutions that will be immediately valuable to our clinicians and patients,” said Tal Heppenstall, president of UPMC Enterprises. Longer term, he added, the technology would enable the development of other data-dependent applications in areas such as care management, population health and consumer engagement. The customer and co-developer model is one that UPMC has also employed with data analytics company Health Catalyst. MedCPU counts more than 60 hospital facilities among its clients. It will open a Pittsburgh office, hire more than 20 engineers and other staff to work with UPMC to co-develop additional products and to improve existing solutions. MedCPU’s technology addresses the healthcare IT challenges of interoperability, capturing all relevant patient data, and understanding free text, dictation and structured data from EHRs and ancillary systems, MedCPU CEO and co-founder and former helicopter pilot Eyal Ephrat, MD, said. Twitter: @HealthITNews

(SPONSORED) Healthcare organizations are focused on patient care and health outcomes, and rightfully so, but financial well-being is equally important for organizations to continue to provide the highest quality care.

The vendor of clinical decision support and precision medicine technology is working with First Databank on the new gene-based drug-drug interaction capability.

Humana subsidiary says the three apps use the HealthLogix technology platform to tackle population health, patient engagement and mobile health.

Health Catalyst has raised $70 million in its fifth round of funding, bringing the total of venture capital it has attracted to $235 million. Norwest Venture Partners, the lead investor in three previous rounds of funding, and UPMC Enterprises, the commercialization arm of UPMC, co-led the round. UPMC is also a Health Catalyst customer and technology development partner. Also contributing are Health Catalyst customers MultiCare Health System and OSF Healthcare, new investor Leerink Capital as well as existing investors Sequoia Capital, Sands Capital, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, CHV Capital (an Indiana University Health Company), Partners HealthCare, EPIC Venture Partners, Leavitt Equity Partners and Tenaya Capital. [Also: Eyeing IPO, Health Catalyst lands $70M] The company will use the new capital to expand its product line. “Our new products, funded by this round, will enable better, faster decisions, from the population level to the individual patient level,” Health Catalyst CEO Dan Burton said. Areas of particular interest, Burton said, are population health management, care management and costing – “precise costing such that you really know what it costs to deliver specific procedures in specific locations.” There’s no standing still for Health Catalyst, a company inspired by the analytics that were being honed at Intermountain Healthcare back in the day when that kind of analysis was done on spreadsheets. Today, Health Catalyst is redefining what it means to improve healthcare outcomes and keep the lid on cost. It is also shaking up how a health IT enterprise does business, having persuaded many of its high-profile clients – Allina Health, Partners HealthCare and UPMC, among them  – to not only work with the company to develop new products, but also to invest big time. “Their investment is very, very meaningful to the company, and their involvement fits within the construct that has really served the company well for many years,” Burton said. “We have found that having mix strategic investors along with pure financial investors provides a healthy balance and complementary strengths. It opens the doors for collaboration and co-development that you wouldn’t normally see being pursued between a health system and a vendor.” Last year Health Catalyst increased the number of patients served by its customers to more 65 million, doubled its bookings backlog, doubled its revenue, nearly doubled its customer footprint and increased the number of employees nationwide from about 230 to more than 400. Burton has been open about Health Catalyst’s plans to go public – though no formal decision has been made. The board will make that decision, he said, and he is only one member. “But, I believe that’s the path that we’re on,” he said. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] “The decision to go public will not be because we need funding,” he added. “This round of capital is designed to give us the balance-sheet strength to get to the cash flow-sustainable territory on our own. As a cash flow sustainable entity, we will not be required to raise capital through the public markets.” Judy Hanover, research director for IDC Health Insights' Healthcare Provider IT Strategies practice, told Healthcare IT News, there are many steps in the data warehousing/analytics process that can fail “even if the tools are great, the implementation is stellar, but the folks in the hospitals that make decisions don’t use the information.” But what Health Catalyst seems to do well, she said, “is that last step of turning the results into reasonable and productive and beneficial decision making at the hospital.” Twitter: @HealthITNews

The vendor said it can create a ‘golden record’ by combining the new tool with its data warehouse to give payers, providers and patients more complete information. 

Cancer treatment is changing for the better and the application of precision medicine deserves some of the credit. Lincoln Nadauld, MD, director of Cancer Genomics at Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, said healthcare is facing a “tremendous paradigm shift. The clinical implementation of precision cancer medicine is rapidly changing the way that advanced cancer patients are treated, and improving outcomes in many cases.” Intermountain Precision Genomics, a service of Intermountain Healthcare, offers genetic sequencing of solid tumors with in-depth sequencing that identifies individual mutations within a person’s cancer cells and identifies specific DNA targets for personalized drugs. Using genomics, Intermountain has been able to identify different treatment options for nearly 80 percent of its cancer patients, Nadauld said. Intermountain offers the genomic testing to any provider nationwide, or worldwide. [Also: 11 essential quotes from notable HIMSS keynotes] The precision cancer medication — in pill form — offered by Intermountain does not have the same negative side effects that cancer treatments in the past have had, Nadauld added, and patients can take the medication in the comfort of their own homes.   Nadauld will share insights during a HIMSS16 session “Precision Medicine: The future is Here.” All of this progress does not come without some challenges, though, some of which include IT infrastructure demands, electronic health record integration and data storage considerations, Nadauld said. “While the improved treatment options associated with precision medicine approaches are exciting, the impact on information technologies is substantial and will require ongoing attention,” Nadauld said.   Despite the challenges, Nadauld said he is excited about the progress of precision medicine, especially for cancer patients.  “The past five years have seen an increasing focus and attention on precision medicine in scientific publications, popular press, and even State of the Union addresses,” he added. “While much of the conversation has centered on the promise of precision medicine, there have been few examples of actual clinical application of precision medicine principles.” “Precision Medicine: The future is Here,” is scheduled for Feb. 29, 2016 from 2-3 p.m. PST in the Sands Expo Convention Center Delfino 4004. Twitter: @HealthITNews This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

3M Health Information Systems plans to unveil the latest module in its 360 Encompass Health Analytics Suite early next week at HIMSS16 in Las Vegas. Physician Compare integrates with the company’s Potentially Preventable Readmissions and Potentially Preventable Complications grouping software, according to materials Healthcare IT News obtained ahead of the launch. Taken together, the risk analysis methodologies enable hospitals to audit doctors to identify avoidable events, notably admissions, emergency room visits, hospital-acquired complications and preventable readmissions. [Poll: What topics will define HIMSS16?] Physician compare brings reports for gauging physicians’ efficiency and performance compared to peers, measuring which resources they use and how those impact outcomes – as well as enabling users to identify tactics for improving physician performance. Another pre-packaged report focuses on what the company called “patient acuity” through avoidable care, admissions and healthcare costs. Released in the summer of 2015, the 3M Encompass Health Analytics Suite also includes State Compare and Patient Compare modules for benchmarking hospital quality performance and patients’ perspective on costs, performance and length of stay. The former is why University Health System in San Antonio, Texas reached out to 3M. Well, that and a little philosophy called the Triple Aim, said Camerino Salazar, senior director of health analytics at UHS. [Also: 21 awesome photos from past HIMSS conferences] “We initially used 3M software to help with reporting for the 1115 state Medicaid waiver,” Salazar explained. “Now that we’ve been operationalizing the analytics dashboard it’s a way to monitor performance and identify the areas where we need to improve quality.” Salazar’s colleague Heidy Colon-Lugo, a senior quality data analyst in the UHS health analytics unit, added that UHS has the Physician Compare module and “physicians can use it to track their own progress,” though the hospital has not yet put it into production at an enterprise level. “We see it as a tool that could be very beneficial on inpatient reporting. It’s on the to-do list – and it’s a gauge for population health management,” Salazar explained because it helps UHS track performance and quality. “If we’re doing a good job of care management and providing timely preventable care, that’s an avenue of keeping people healthy. We’re the downstream so if things are operating well we should see those changes to readmissions, costs, the Triple Aim.” Twitter: @SullyHIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Cerner has announced that Geisnger Health System subsidiary xG Health Solutions will use Cerner’s HealtheIntent population health management platform and, in turn, Cerner will use xG Health’s clinical content. xG Health’s care management clinical content automates the assessment of a variety of hereditary, socioeconomic, physical, behavioral and environmental risk factors, as well as warning signs and symptoms associated with specific conditions. Cerner clients will be able to use xG Health’s clinical content within HealtheCare, Cerner’s community care management solution that provides algorithms with the ability to identify, stratify and prioritize individuals for assignment to aligned care managers. [Also: 21 awesome photos from past HIMSS conferences] The HealtheCare and xG Health clinical content collaboration will provide evidence-based patient assessments for dozens of conditions, be integrated into workflows, and automate the generation of patient-specific action plans to boost personalized care, the vendors said. The agreement will also see Cerner integrate xG Health’s analytics content into Cerner’s HealtheAnalytics system. The alignment expands Cerner’s population health management suite to provide organizations with analytic discoveries that can help reduce costs and improve healthcare quality and patient outcomes, Cerner said. “What interested us in xG Health is the commercial arm of Geisinger Health System, which acts as a testbed for technology,” said Brad Carey, vice president and general manager of population health. “We’ve initially partnered with xG Health on things that revolve around care management content and population health, and are looking to xG Health’s business intelligence specially derived from claims data.” Cerner also announced that the University of Kansas Hospital will deploy the HealtheIntent population health management platform to coordinate and manage care in rural Kansas communities, according to Robert Moser, MD, director of the Kansas Heart and Stroke Collaborative. Moser said the collaborative will also use HealtheCare, Cerner’s community care management system, to engage at-risk patient and ideally provide optimal treatment resources. Cerner’s population health management platform will be featured in Cerner Booth 2032 at HIMSS16, Feb. 29-March 4 at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Deal puts focus on mobile population health, chronic care management.