One benefit of Kaiser Permanente spending an estimated $6 billion for an integrated electronic health records (EHR) system to serve 9 million people across eight regions from coast to coast is it that has amassed a vast repository of clinical data. That storehouse also contains information from a patient portal, ancillary systems, smart medical devices and even home-based patient monitoring systems. All those terabytes of electronic data now are helping to fuel a massive analytics operation, part of an overall organizational goal of improving care and reining in costs.