Yes, with an added element in which you’re actually reaching the age of artificial intelligence, so that data feeds back into that workflow, and what will happen is that the processing of these vast amounts of data will allow for the clinician to evaluate the data available to him or her. The system will say, ‘This is what we analyze in terms of Mark’s condition, and we have a 90-percent confidence level in this analysis; do you feel this is right, Doctor?’ In other words, rather than requiring the physician to collect the data points, the data points will come to the physician, who will still make the decision. But it means real-time predictive analytics brought to the point of care. And we believe it will turn into where the physician or clinician, sitting in a diagnostic cockpit, if you will, with the electronic health record, the analytics, the imaging information, molecular diagnostics, the genetic information, will all feed into that cockpit. So a lot of components will automatically be populated, and this power will be at a level higher than where we are today.
And we’ll see convergence; in fact, we actually have a project called Convergence, and you can see elements of that being demonstrated at our Technology Development Center [which displays prototypes of emerging projects within the organization]. And look at Watson, and what Larry Ellison and his colleagues are doing with Exadata. I think it’s moving much faster than what we realize. And staying out in front will be important.
Might not a digital divide between the haves and have-nots be emerging in this area, with some healthcare organizations having the resources to “do big data,” and some not having those resources?
I think you’re going to see a lot more consolidation to deliver on these healthcare reform and regulatory requirements. I just don’t see the one-two doctor practices continuing; I see large groups or large health systems achieving this. I think you’re accurate when you say that, that there will be a digital divide between those who can move to those technologies and accomplish a convergence and an integration into the workflow, with analytics capability. I think it will be a requirement of doing business, of delivering care. So fortunately or unfortunately, this is the way it’s moving.
And you see it with healthcare reform and the ACOs; you look at these groups of providers and insurers together… and we’re already there. But there are organizations that will stand out in terms of their IT capabilities.
And that will be a market differentiator, right?
Yes. And you see situations where people might say, the CIO should be doing that, but the science area now is all about technology, but the reality is that almost everything we do now has clinical elements intertwined, so it requires collaboration with senior clinical leaders, such as Dr. Shapiro and his colleagues, here at UPMC. And in the past, we used departmental information systems to accomplish specific tasks; but now it’s moved to where IT is the solution overall.
And you see that necessary coming together of non-clinicians and clinicians in IT, right?
Yes, I do see that as a team coming together. And I see the CIO, the CMIO, and the CTO all sitting together, across different types of reporting structures. The reality is that the reporting structures don’t matter; but those responsibilities have to be approached in an interactive way. And I look at Dan Martich [G. Daniel Martich, M.D., UPMC’s CMIO] and Vivek Reddy [chief medical information officer for UPMC Physician and Hospital Services Vivek Reddy, M.D.], and I don’t feel as though my responsibilities are “higher” or anything; instead, we’re all bouncing things off each other. The same thing is true with the CTO role, which is executed here by a few different individuals.
And let’s just take the data network or let’s say the server environment, the virtualization environment—if any of that isn’t right, you’ve pretty much shut everything down. And staying ahead of that, it is about skating to where the puck is going, as Wayne Gretzky said. And we’ve been fortunate in the culture of the organization, which is very future-focused. We had a situation here just last week, when Adrian Lee, Ph.D. [a researcher working on applying IT solutions to the task of translating ongoing research advances in genomics to breast cancer care at the University of Pittsburgh] made a presentation to our IT board of directors meeting that articulated how sophisticated IT is helping to improve breast cancer care for our patients, and Mark J. Laskow, the vice chair of the IT board of visitors and a director on the UPMC board of directors [and CEO of Greycourt and Co.], said, ‘This is exactly why we invested the billion dollars in IT, to improve the care for the individual, to predict and address illnesses upfront, and find cures for illnesses, this is what it’s all about.’ And think about that statement, it’s pretty cool, it’s pretty exciting.
Are there any lessons learned so far on this big-data journey at UPMC that you could share with your healthcare IT leader peers nationwide?
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