A Year in Review: Looking Back at 2020
We are well into a new year, and we couldn’t be more grateful for a fresh start and new beginnings. As we eagerly embrace 2021 with open arms, we wanted to look back at 2020 and reflect on the achievements, opportunities, stories, and partnerships we were grateful to have been a part of this past year.
01
Enabling 86% Avoidance in Unplanned Chronic Kidney Disease Admissions and Saving $6 million at Intermountain Healthcare
Identification and early engagement of CKD patients enabled early intervention and 86% avoidance in unplanned admissions for our risk population, well surpassing our target of 50% in range of $6 million in savings.
Intermountain Healthcare, along with MDClone, worked with clinical and operational leaders in Kidney Services to deploy algorithms that accurately identified CKD patients by stage, presence of acute kidney injury (AKI) and stratified these patients by gaps in care and time from last encounter. This data-driven process helped to identify and engage with these patients early to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions as well as track and manage these patients by action, outcome, and cost.
Read more about how Intermountain achieved their remarkable results.
02
Validating Synthetic Data Through Rambam Health Care Campus’s Research
In each case, the synthetic data “provides a close estimate to real data results.”
A team at Rambam Health Care Campus published a paper in JMIR Medical Informatics describing the value of MDClone and synthetic data to democratize data, providing the ability to conduct “rapid, safe, and repeatable analysis of data in hospitals.” The paper shares results from five studies at Rambam where researchers used MDClone to build patient cohorts and extract synthetic data for analysis before returning to MDClone to extract original data for validation of the results. In each case, the synthetic data “provides a close estimate to real data results.”
The data access process described in the paper is transformative for Rambam, the first health system to implement MDClone. It provides a self-service model for researchers to quickly test hypotheses using synthetic data and to use PHI (with an IRB) only when needed, prior to publication or the treatment of patients. As the research shows, because the synthetic data closely resembles PHI, in many cases − including in quality analyses or other hospital operations-oriented initiatives − there is no need to ever use PHI.
Read the full research paper here.
03
Supporting National COVID-19 Efforts with the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Generating and sharing computationally derived, privacy-preserving synthetic clinical health data for scientific efforts
In June, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) partnered with MDClone to support national scientific exploration in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using MDClone’s platform, NIH aggregates clinical health data from multiple regions across the United States and generates non-identifiable synthetic clinical health data for research. This first-of-its-kind, unique public-private collaboration leverages “synthetic data” to protect individual patient privacy while drastically speeding up the compilation and analysis of healthcare data, enabling the development of solutions to combat the pandemic.
Through the NIH and MDClone partnership, a network of academic healthcare sites will generate and share the computationally derived, privacy-preserving synthetic data. Preserving distributions and correlations inside the data, synthetic data makes it possible to conduct complex statistical analyses.
04
Impacting the Lives of Veterans with the VHA Innovation Ecosystem
Collaboration Will Enable the Country’s Largest Integrated Healthcare System to Democratize Data to Address Veterans’ Unique Care Needs Related to Suicide Prevention, COVID-19, and Beyond
In December, the partnership between the VHA Ecosystem and MDClone was announced with the goal of empowering a wide network of VHA clinical and operational staff to explore data in order to impact the lives of veterans nationwide. The MDClone platform enables non-technical users to find insights faster than ever before in order to improve quality, innovation, and clinical research at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The initial collaboration will utilize synthetic data to focus on suicide prevention, chronic disease management, precision medicine, health equity, and COVID-19.
To learn more about the partnership, click here.
05
Expanding into Canada with The Ottawa Hospital
“MDClone’s technology is helping The Ottawa Hospital deliver 21st century health care to our patients,” said Dr Alan Forster, VP, Innovation & Quality.
In February, we were thrilled to announce our partnership with The Ottawa Hospital, the first healthcare organization in Canada to deploy MDClone at their facility.
Through the partnership, users at The Ottawa Hospital will be able to democratize their healthcare data across the entire ecosystem, making it easier for researchers to identify and leverage the potentially lifesaving data within them into actionable information that can transform patient care and outcomes.
The innovation behind MDClone’s technology lies in its flexible yet powerful infrastructure. All patient data become events on individual timelines. The platform then seamlessly connects data points across many patients and many sources, which helps healthcare professionals gain more meaningful insights that will define 21st century healthcare.
Read more about the partnership.
06
Founding The Global Network to Bring Together The World’s Most Innovative Health Organizations.
Using MDClone, health systems from the U.S., Canada and Israel will leverage synthetic data for a member-driven collaborative to generate knowledge and innovative approaches to better patient care and outcomes..
In July, MDClone announced the launch of The Global Network - a research and knowledge sharing collaborative. The Global Network addresses an important barrier in cross-institution collaboration by providing synthetic data to allow for robust analysis between organizations while keeping patient privacy in tact. The MDClone platform offers a framework to better understand the health of patients and develop solutions for care delivery. Using the platform installed across The Global Network sites, members will develop solutions and explore ideas together to improve patient health, leveraging over 30 million total patients within the Network.
In its first year, The Global Network will focus on three pillars of research: health services, clinical medicine and precision medicine. Members will be able to conduct projects within multiple sites, including study design and replication, testing new approaches and partnering with external healthcare organizations.
07
Hosting a Series of Webinars Focused on Innovation, Empowering Users, Utilizing Synthetic Data, and Improving Care
Transitioning during the time of social distanced events, we hosted an array of thought provoking webinars featuring customers from Intermountain Healthcare, Sheba Medical Center, and Washington University in St. Louis. We were able to deep dive into how innovation and data is empowering users at their individual organizations and how MDClone has made an impact on their daily work, research, operational processes, and more.
Watch the webinars on-demand here.
08
Attending Events Virtually
From small gatherings to large-scale virtual exhibit halls to speaking opportunities to roundtable discussions, virtual events this year were indeed..weird. We all had to pivot our “in-person” strategies and kudos to those hosting these events for finding ways for us to attend them digitally.
Sign up for our newsletter to see where we’ll be attending events in 2021.
09
Making Headlines Worldwide
We are proud to share the success of our customers’ stories from last year. From being featured in Forbes to G2 to Bloomberg and beyond, we have watched partnerships and data-driven healthcare unfold. We look forward to continued success with our customers in 2021.
Forbes: Creating Planet Data To Fight Covid-19 And Future Healthcare Emergencies
Forbes: ‘Covid Put Everything On Steroids,’ Says Prominent Healthtech Investor
G2: The Appeal and Real-Life Consequences of Applying Synthetic Data to Sensitive Clinical Data
Information Week: How Synthetic Data Accelerates Coronavirus Research
Jerusalem Post: Israeli Company Helps US National Institutes of Health Fight Coronavirus
10
To 2021 and Beyond
At MDClone, we are eager to continue building relationships with healthcare organizations in order to improve operational excellence, quality, and patient outcomes. Our mission drives us to provide the best service and best product for customers, and we are thrilled to work with some of the brightest, most innovative enterprises already. If you want to get in touch with the team, reach out and start the conversation.
Wishing you health, happiness, and success in 2021.