UPMC Goes Big Into Big Data: Health System Investing $100 Million in a Five-Year Enterprise Analytics Initiative

As for the prominent vendor companies partnering with UPMC health system on this initiative, Neil de Crescenzo, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Health Sciences, at Oracle Corporation, has a ready answer, when asked what he and his colleagues at Oracle hope to get out of the UPMC partnership. “What we hope to obtain together is really a proof point for the vision of how the types of analytics we provide can really be used to impact patient health,” de Crescenzo says. “That’s why, even though it’s early days yet, our partnership with UPMC has been so fruitful, because we share the same vision. So if the kinds of systems they’re developing and we’re supporting become the norm in American healthcare in the next three to five years, that’s what I hope to get out of it.

Likening the collaboration to the partnerships that Oracle has with the countries of Singapore and Australia on their nationwide electronic health record (EHR) initiatives, de Crescenzo, who notes that Oracle will also be partnering in a similar way with the government of Norway, shares his perspective on the scope of the UPMC initiative. “I think that what’s unique about this,” he says, “is that UPMC, being an integrated enterprise, including with their health plan operation, they’re really second to Kaiser Permanente in this country” with regard to size and level of operational integration, “and the ability to do something on this size and scale, is a unique opportunity.”

Of course, UPMC’s leaders recognize that most patient care organizations nationwide won’t be able to afford $100 million on analytics initiatives like this, yet at the same time, they believe that the principles behind the new effort they’re embarking on can be widely applied. Asked what the leaders at organizations with fewer resources might be able to do in this area, Shapiro says that, “While they might not be in a perfect position to improve quality and lower costs, in some ways, we’re all being driven towards that [imperative]. So they need to understand the power of analytics, and structure and use data to learn about their business, to save money, and to move forward into the future. So,” he says, “I would tell them they have to highly prioritize their data and learn from it, because that will really help them survive and thrive.”