Hospitals Implement Unified Intelligence System to Aggregate and Share Health Information Overview “There hasn‟t been one thing we have asked for, that Country or Region: United States Industry: Healthcare Amalga wasn‟t able to deliver to the client. WHIE clinicians can easily create custom views using data Customer Profile elements contained in a base view, or edit one of the Novant Health is a not-for-profit organization in North and South Carolina. H. Lee Moffitt existing templates.” Cancer Center & Research Institute is a Dr. Edward Barthell, President, National Institute of Medical Informatics National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. The Wisconsin Health Information Exchange is a Efficient healthcare delivery is a priority for governments, health information exchange project in healthcare facilities, caregivers, and patients. The exchange of southeastern Wisconsin. electronic healthcare information among institutions and Business Situation individuals that provide health services is a key enabler of patient- To provide patient-centric care, healthcare facilities needed an easier way to aggregate centric care, but it remains a challenge for the entire industry. data from their health systems so clinicians, Microsoft released Microsoft® Amalga™, the Unified Intelligence administrators, and researchers can make better decisions. System, to answer this challenge. Early adopters are taking advantage of the layered architecture and unique database design Solution Healthcare facilities deployed Microsoft® of Amalga to integrate health information from disparate systems Amalga™, the Unified Intelligence System and deliver the data to end users. With Amalga, IT departments can that integrates clinical, administrative, research, and financial data, and delivers it support the information needs of their institutions. Instead of to users through customizable user searching for information among many systems, clinicians and interfaces. other users can use Amalga to gain self serve access to the data Benefits they need from one place to improve patient care. Shared data improves patient care Better healthcare reporting Empowered clinical staff Low cost electronic data exchange Improved reporting services from IT staff “With the ability to Situation information among hospital departments is The healthcare IT ecosystem has evolved just as great as the need to share information coordinate data from over the years into a fragmented, complex across enterprise boundaries in regional disparate systems, environment, with a plethora of incompatible health information exchanges. In fact, it‟s a Amalga can improve the systems, data silos, and data formats. The prerequisite to coordinated, patient-centric patient is at the center of the vast amounts of care.” efficiency of healthcare clinical, administrative, and financial data providers while that reside within the healthcare IT Unfortunately, for many healthcare ecosystem. Unfortunately, as patients move organizations it isn‟t easy to efficiently and supporting better through the healthcare system, receiving economically create a single integrated decision making and different levels of care at different facilities, system that contains all the information a ultimately better care.” the data they generate does not always flow doctor may require to treat a patient. Rich with them. Separate clinical, financial, and McKnight, Senior Vice President and Chief Dr. Stephen Wallenhaupt, Executive Vice pharmaceutical records are kept wherever Information Officer at Novant Health, President and Chief Medical Officer, Novant patients interact with the system, at describes a familiar problem, “At Novant Health hospitals, physicians‟ offices, clinics, Health, our physicians have to remember outpatient units, pharmacies, labs, and multiple passwords and navigate different health insurance companies. systems to access the entire range of information on a patient that is stored at the Hospitals and health facilities capture patient hospital, from lab results to doctors‟ notes to information in many different data formats, prescriptions. And the more complicated depending on their health solutions. For someone‟s medical situation is, the more example, it can be difficult to share radiology information from different sources is required images with another facility that uses a to provide optimal care. We wanted to reduce different medical imaging system. This the amount of time spent gathering situation is frustrating for the patient, who is information to increase the amount of time forced to provide the same information every spent on providing care.” time he or she interacts with a new care provider. It is also frustrating for the clinicians The situation is exacerbated when a patient and care givers, who are unable to access a appears at an emergency department with no complete, up-to-date history of the patient. previous admissions on his or her record. In According to the Wisconsin Health this situation, instant access to key Information Exchange (WHIE), a regional components of that patient‟s medical history health information exchange project in could mean the difference between life and southeastern Wisconsin, doctors spend death. “Yet there wasn‟t a single technology between 20 and 30 percent of their time solution that we could use to build a health searching for information and the lack of information exchange that would immediate access to patient information is electronically move health and medical the source of thousands of medical errors information securely between doctors, every year. hospitals, and other healthcare providers when it‟s needed for direct patient care,” “We all talk about patient-centric care, but it says Barthell. will remain a hoped-for goal until we can find a way to share health information,” says Dr. Similarly, clinicians, scientists, and Edward Barthell, President of the National researchers need unfettered access to Institute of Medical Informatics, the funding clinical data stored in disparate health body behind WHIE. “The need to share information systems and epidemiological data to conduct their research. The H. Lee also affects the industry‟s financial health Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute is and operational efficiencies. Health facilities developing a personalized cancer care need a consolidated view of clinical, financial, delivery system called Total Cancer Care and operational information to improve the (TCC). Researchers are investigating new receipt of reimbursement fees for services, to ways to provide personalized cancer care assess performance against benchmarks of based on identifying disease-specific bio- excellence, and to comply with the Joint markers. To support their research, Moffitt Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare built a strategic data warehouse that Organizations and other quality and safety aggregates clinical, research, and financial performance measures. data from several operational systems. But Moffitt scientists did not have a tool they Despite recent improvements and could use to explore this data by themselves investments in the field of healthcare in a way that facilitated their research. The informatics, health facilities and care tool needed to support disparate data types providers were still waiting for a technology ranging from clinical data, lab results, that could economically and efficiently prescriptions, surgery, and financial data to integrate digital data from different sources images, including CT scans, MRIs, and X-ray. and then provide customizable access to that data for self-serve analysis. “Our researchers were constantly requesting data (via queries) from the IT department with minor changes in every iteration of the Solution query,” says Srivaths Srinivasan, Director of When the Microsoft® Health Solutions Group Total Cancer Care Systems at H. Lee Moffitt (HSG) acquired a technology developed at Cancer Center & Research Institute. “For the Washington Hospital Center called Microsoft researchers, it was always a struggle to Amalga™, the Unified Intelligence System, all combine in one view different types of clinical that changed. Amalga is based on Microsoft and epidemiological data from multiple .NET connection software and the Windows source systems. It wasn‟t possible for us to Server® 2003 operating system. Healthcare hire enough IT data analysts and report IT staffs can use Amalga to consolidate their builders to support our 300 researchers‟ clinical, administrative, and financial information needs. We needed an efficient information into a unique, metadata-tagged self-service tool that would support data store layered on multiple instances of customizable data exploration.” the Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database. Clinicians and other hospital staffers now can The same pain points underlie these different use one source to access information from scenarios—sharing and accessing aggregate numerous systems. And they can take health data among departments in a hospital, advantage of the Amalga optimized user among hospitals, and within research interface to combine the data in customized institutions—and they resonate across the views for on-the-fly data analysis. HSG is entire healthcare ecosystem, where partnering with select early adopters to refine hospitals, healthcare facilities, insurance the product and develop its potential. plans, specialists, and patients all interact in a web of interconnections with little or no Creating a Partnership for