Mercy Unveils Health Data Network to Pool Clinical Data for Analysis
St. Louis-based Mercy health system, through its Mercy Technology Services arm, has launched a health data network to pool clinical data from across the United States.
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- St. Louis-based Mercy health system, through its Mercy Technology Services arm, has launched a health data network to pool clinical data from across the United States.
Mercy plans to partner with healthcare providers, who will contribute data to the pool for analysis using advanced data analytics.
The health system will build on its current repository of de-identified patient data from electronic health records and other sources, establishing a large database of real-world evidence.
Mercy worked with SAP to develop the health data network, which is powered by the SAP HANA database.
Healthcare providers can use improved real-world evidence using the network to guide their own data-driven clinical and business choices, while providing clinical data to medical device manufacturers and regulatory bodies. In addition, data network will generate fresh revenue for suppliers to deal with cost pressures, helping to finance their mission in healthcare while promoting innovation.
Starting with an emphasis on orthopedic, cardiology, and oncology data, Mercy’s data network will provide subscribers with curated information that is frequently refreshed with new health records and then organized by Mercy's researchers to answer questions as they emerge.
In contrast to claims and registry data, subscribers to the Mercy network will get comprehensive information at the clinical practice level and can contact clinicians to provide context to the data.
“We began this work to ensure the medical devices Mercy uses work for patients,” said Joseph Drozda, M.D., Mercy’s director of outcomes research. "With more than 8,000 new medical devices entering the market each year, it’s critical that we find better ways to evaluate their performance.”
Real-world evidence helped Mercy shine a light on the cost of medical devices relative to their results, highlighting devices that function best at the best price point. In the first three years of using real-world evidence, Mercy saved an estimated $33 million in implanted devices and surgical equipment without sacrificing patient care.
Mercy signed research partnerships with medical device companies Johnson and Johnson Medical Devices, Medtronic, and BD, which used the network to gain insight about the effectiveness of their medical devices and the clinical variables that factor into it.
“Having the ability to study patient care pathways and conditions before and after exposure to a medical device is crucial to understanding how those devices perform outside of the controlled clinical trial setting,” said Rick Kuntz, senior vice president for strategic scientific operations at Medtronic. “By partnering together, Mercy and Medtronic have set out to create a comprehensive and economical evidence generation model that ultimately allows patients to benefit from the latest therapies and technologies as early as possible.”
Mercy said that the real-world evidence network creates value for each of its stakeholders:
- Providers, once they’ve contributed data to the network, will gain shares of revenue from each relevant query by its subscribers. In addition, using the network can enable providers to accelerate their evidenced-based decision making with visualization dashboards to compare costs and outcomes of products used in their organizations, as well as access to benchmarks derived from the experiences of participating providers.
- Medical device and pharmaceutical companies can subscribe to the network to help meet regulatory requirements, drive drug and device development, support outcomes-based contracts, and reduce their products’ time to market.
- Federal health agencies can use the network to enhance monitoring of product safety once the product is on the market, tracking adverse events, and leveraging data for regulatory decisions.
“It’s a clinical research model where everyone wins,” said Curtis Dudley,vice president of data analytics at Mercy Technology Services. “Mercy built our [real-world evidence] platform to make sure we’re providing the best possible care, but with an urgent need for data-driven change across health care, it just makes sense to scale our efforts, share unique capabilities and come together as empowered providers to create better care for patients everywhere.”
Added Martin Mrugal, global head of customer success at SAP: “This partnership with Mercy demonstrates SAP’s commitment to improving healthcare effectiveness and innovating with customers as strategic partners."
