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Intermountain Shares Tech Goodies, Big Data Plans

 |  By smace@healthleadersmedia.com  
   March 19, 2013

In the scramble that is today's healthcare industry, expect to see the unusual. At the HIMSS conference in New Orleans this month, Exhibit A was tech goodies on display at Intermountain Healthcare's booth and its announcement of a strategic alliance with Deloitte.

At the HIMSS booth, Intermountain chief technology officer Fred Holston was demonstrating new technologies developed internally, and looking for technology partners to help mass produce them.

The first invention was fiendishly simple: A wristwatch that can sense when the wearer has washed his or her hands. If they're washed, a light on the face of the watch glows green. If they aren't washed, or if the caregiver has left the room, the watch face displays a red light.

"Imagine the impact we can have on the whole infection control conversation," Holston told me. Now, instead of a scoreboard somewhere showing that hands are washed, there's a beacon to remind the clinicians and their patients that a hand-washing regimen is being followed, or not.

It was just an idea that came "off the floor" of an Intermountain facility, Holston says. "It would not have made in the top list of Intermountain's priorities, because it's not what we tend to do. [But] I'm pretty sure we'll be the first customer, and roll it out to all the caregivers to improve our handwashing compliance."

Intermountain's initiative is so totally contrary to traditional big-company thinking, where a department cranks out RFPs or fruitlessly searches for products already on the market. Today it's different. Holston has 22,000 square feet spread across two buildings to crank out concepts and partner with tech companies such as Xi3.

"It's companies that have real businesses who want to make stronger impacts in healthcare," Holston says. "They need a little effort in making sure their products work well in healthcare, or are in a position to tweak to do what we need to do, and in some cases, yeah, build the whole thing."

Another Intermountain product concept, a little further off in the pipeline, Holston calls the Life Detector. "So instead of all the monitoring that occurs, and there are plenty of monitors out there for collecting vitals, we flipped the idea and said so there's a number of situations where we want to detect—death," he says.

It's a patch containing a single-line EKG, not for recording, but simply to note if the signal ceases. At that point, a window of opportunity exists for reviving the patient, whether it be a SIDS-prone baby, or a patient on suicide watch.

"I can't guarantee you can do anything about it, but I can give you a window to do something, to try," Holston says. It could activate a mobile phone app that calls 911 or starts telling someone things to try.

And, in those cases where the victim is too far gone, it can also alert authorities before a loved one or neighbor has to encounter a body hours or days later. Holston's own brother found their mother in that state, "and that's an image that will always be in his mind," he says.

The point of many tech innovations, Holston says, is to "chew away at the problem of how healthcare works and how we can improve, and how we can save, or how we can bring dignity to life or whatever the case may be."

The big data announcement

Intermountain's alliance with Deloitte, announced at HIMSS, takes a big-data twist on innovation. Deloitte will bring 30 years of data analytics extracted from Intermountain's electronic health records to life science, pharmaceutical and maybe even other healthcare provider customers.

"This is our patients' data, not ours," says Intermountain CIO Marc Probst. "But we did think we were learning a boatload of stuff based on this data."

Deloitte's recent acquisition of big-data analytics firm Recombinant gave Deloitte the skill set to become Intermountain's go-to partner, Probst says.

Although financial benefits of the deal will hardly be a blip on Intermountain's balance sheet at first, Intermountain is taking a longer view. "Right now we have around 150 formalized completely researched and implemented protocols," Probst says. "If what we can do with this process with Deloitte is triple that, imagine how much better our care will be, and what it could do to lower costs."

Initial targets of the alliance will be to unlock research insights, including best practices in treating diabetes and asthma, Probst says. "As we continue the relationship, as other people get involved, that should broaden the data, and therefore the quality and the types of research that can be done," he says.

Probst hopes to see the first fruits of the alliance by July, although with a laugh he adds, "Just what I needed was another published goal to hit."

Probst reminds me that wherever these centers of innovation exist—at Intermountain, at Partners, at Mayo, or wherever—part of the investment is to recognize that healthcare providers are generating inventions and that means intellectual property to protect. "We've got 30,000 people coming up with great ideas, so some of them you definitely want to protect," he says.

Healthcare reform continues to make strange bedfellows. On the technology side, stranger days are yet to come.

Scott Mace is the former senior technology editor for HealthLeaders Media. He is now the senior editor, custom content at H3.Group.

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