Cincinnati-based Bon Secours Mercy Health is analyzing its big data repository for clinical insights into its millions of patients.
Here are five things to know, according to a Becker's interview with Mark Townsend, MD, chief clinical innovation officer at Bon Secours Mercy Health:
1. The 48-hospital system partnered with data analytics company Omny Health in 2022 to enable Bon Secours Mercy Health researchers to extract clinical insights from its 11 million annual patient encounters. The platform "allows us to, essentially, put out a specific clinical scenario and then go and find the needle in the haystack," Dr. Townsend said.
2. Two recent successes for the project have been boosting support and tracking of expectant mothers and connecting patients to clinical trials.
3. "We live in the big data age. To the extent that we can start to leverage that to improve and personalize care delivery, that is the promise," Dr. Townsend said. "If we're using the electronic health record literally as a transactional tool, we're not doing our patients justice. We're obviously believers. We believe in the power of big data."
4. Bon Secours Mercy Health has also invested in Omny Health through the health system's digital health arm, Accrete Health Partners.
5. The health system has high hopes for the technology reaching its full potential. "We get there by developing new use cases for that data — that's where the sky is the limit," Dr. Townsend said. "I'm obviously an optimist. But the use cases for that data specific to population-based insights, addressing anything from social and behavioral determinants of health to taking large-scale problems and then personalizing that through precision medicine and genomics — all the beautiful tools we've talked a lot about that we haven't fully leveraged yet — I think that's where we're going with this."