Mercy, Mayo Clinic Announce Data Analytics Partnership

The two large health systems are joining forces to use 'the most current data science and years of deidentified patient outcomes to find diseases earlier and start patients on paths to better health more quickly.'

Mercy and the Mayo Clinic have announced a partnership to use data and technology to improve care management.

The deal brings together two large health systems with long and storied track records in innovation and aims to combine their talents in using "the most current data science and years of deidentified patient outcomes to find diseases earlier and start patients on paths to better health more quickly."

“This unique collaboration will eliminate the barriers to innovation in healthcare by bringing together data and human expertise through a new way of working together,” John Halamka, MD, an emergency medicine physician and president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, said in a press release issued this morning. “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.”

We have a unique opportunity today to transform mountains of clinical experience into actionable information that optimizes patient care,” added John Mohart, MD, a cardiologist and president of Mercy communities. “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 collaboration will focus initially on data-sharing for patient outcomes, a natural goal for two early adopters of electronic health records technology. Their work will target two domains:

• Information collaboration. Mayo and Mercy will work with data that has been de-identified and secured in a distributed data network accessible to both organizations. They'll use that information to "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."
• Solution and algorithm development and validation. These algorithms, executives say, "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 say the project may spawn other collaborations involving neuroscience, cardiovascular and complex cancer care and precision medicine, to name a few.