Mayo Clinic, Mercy collaborate to share data, patient outcomes
Jul. 29—A 10-year agreement between the Mayo Clinic and Mercy will use the most current data science combined with past patient outcomes to find diseases earlier and start patients on paths to better health more quickly, the two health care systems announced this week.
"This unique collaboration will eliminate the barriers to innovation in health care by bringing together data and human expertise through a new way of working together," said Dr. John Halamka, an emergency medicine physician and president of Mayo Clinic Platform, in a statement. "By working together, we will be able to find the best paths for treatment and diagnosis to benefit patients everywhere. Our union has the potential to transform medicine worldwide."
Mayo and Mercy were early adopters of integrated electronic health records, and over more than a decade they have collected a vast amount of treatment outcomes and clinical data. Until recently, the information was too unstructured and complex to analyze.
But with the combination of privacy-protected, cloud-based technology architecture, and the growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning, this data generates patterns to pinpoint disease earlier and identify best treatment options, health officials said.
"We have a unique opportunity today to transform mountains of clinical experience into actionable information that optimizes patient care," said Dr. John Mohart, a cardiologist and president of Mercy communities, in a statement. "This gives physicians, providers and operational leaders critical information that can ensure patients receive the right treatment at the right time based on millions of previous patient outcomes, while simultaneously improving operational efficiencies and lowering costs. We believe bringing technology and data science to the bedside can provide better patient care, shorter hospital stays and overall better health for people everywhere."
The Mayo and Mercy agreement will initially focus on:
—Information collaboration. All data are deidentified and secured in a distributed data network that enables Mayo and Mercy to work with an extensive set of outcomes without extracting or transferring data between the organizations. Each health care system will retain control over its deidentified outcomes throughout the process.
The information will help scientists analyze patterns of effective disease treatment and, more importantly, disease prevention in new ways based upon longitudinal data review over an extended period of time, officials said in a news release.
—Solution and algorithm development and validation. The resulting algorithms will provide proven treatment paths based on years of patient outcomes, representing the next generation of proactive and predictive medicine that can be used by care providers around the world to access best practices in medical care, officials said.
