New initiative hopes to help providers apply algorithms to treatment

Premier is partnering with a startup vendor to develop real-time predictive algorithms to inform patient treatment by using specific genetic markers.

The goal is to bring precision medicine within the reach of any health system regardless of size or budget.

Premier is working with new vendor Progknowse, led by former Inova Health System chief technology officer Marshall Ruffin, MD, and the team intends to engage with leading research universities and data scientists.

The partners are using the PremierConnect performance improvement platform to develop the predictive analytics.

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Progknowse will access de-identified clinical outcomes data from the platform covering nearly half of all patient discharges in the nation, enabling data scientists to create algorithms that support personalized treatment based on patients’ specific genetic information.



“This partnership combines the skills and resources necessary to access data sets, and genomic information to create a broader national healthcare database for data scientists to analyze,” says Leigh Anderson, president of performance services at Premier.

A big challenge in precision medicine programs is the need for massive amounts of clinical data, says Brett Beaulieu-Jones, co-founder of Progknowse, and also serving as a research fellow in biomedical informatics at Harvard Medicine School.

“Not only does this include genomic sequencing information for a large population, but also treatment variables housed within the electronic health record system and their connections to longitudinal cost and quality outcomes,” he adds. “Working with Premier and Progknowse, we will develop and have access to an extensive predictive data source with algorithms that enable us to better understand the progression of diseases, how they affect specific patient populations and how providers can better intervene for successful long-term outcomes.”