Health IT, Hospitals, Startups

Case-based reasoning sits at the core of a new data-driven decision tool for hospitals

It’s somewhat logical that ideas and technologies that originated in the hospitality industry, or retail, […]

It’s somewhat logical that ideas and technologies that originated in the hospitality industry, or retail, or advertising, would have applications in the healthcare industry today. But Verdande Technology has shown me one I haven’t heard before. It’s taking technology developed to mitigate risk in the oil and gas industry and applying it to the operating room.

“No matter how prepared physicians may be before surgery, situations can change rapidly on the operating table,” said the CEO of the company’s healthcare division, Neal Benedict. It’s the same way in drilling, and so Verdande had developed a decision support platform that monitors data being collected during oil-well drilling operations, predicts problems and offers real-time solutions to those problems based on the outcomes of past scenarios.

Verdande has found some traction in that market and now thinks the same idea could be used to generate better outcomes in healthcare. At the core of the company’s solution is case-based reasoning, the process of problem solving based on solutions used to solve similar problems in the past. Its Edge platform provides physicians with a suggested course of action based on similar, past cases where certain solutions resulted in positive outcomes.

Many hospitals already use third-party apps to aggregate data from various monitors, machines and information systems (in the OR, that might be something like anesthesia manager). Verdande’s technology intercepts that data and uses algorithms to detect similarities between that case and past cases. Benedict said the company believes the software can start showing trends after collecting data from about 800 cases.

The problem with existing decision-making tools like predictive analytics, Benedict said, is that they’re based on static data and may offer several “what if” scenarios that need to be further evaluated. Case-based reasoning continuously analyzes real-time data streams and acts more like an early warning system.

“We’re coming in in real-time and we’re going to tell you with fairly good accuracy what’s going to happen if you don’t take particular steps to remediate,” he said. “We won’t give five scenarios; we’ll give you the one most closely correlated with that case.”

The real-time element is important, he said, because the risk profile of a patient can change at almost any time.

Verdande has been working with a few hospital systems in Texas to develop the product. “We have an early understanding of what the product is, and we are engaged right now with a data pool and with data analysis,” Benedict said. “We are hoping to have a product up and running in a facility in the next couple months.”

The nine-year-old company spun out from the Norwegian University of Science Technology in 2004, set up headquarters in Norway and raised some venture-level funding from capital partners in Europe a few years later. Today, much of the business activity is handled from its U.S. facility in Houston.

“As a company, we are aggressively expanding,” Benedict said. “We are pushing to get a product into the healthcare market this year.” Although its initial work is being done in heart clinics, Benedict said the company sees several other areas of opportunity for the product in healthcare that it plans to pursue.

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