In all of the chatter around sensors, healthcare big data and patient engagement lately, there seems to be a general agreement that healthcare data will be most useful when it’s integrated and filtered in a way that guides consumers, physicians or insurers to make decisions that result in improved outcomes and reduce costs.
Datu Health is one of the companies trying to make that happen.
“We stand at the crossroads of what doctors do and your wearable health devices,” explained Christopher Dailey, the company’s head of research.
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Understanding exactly what the company does is easier when you understand where it came from. Datu’s seeds were planted about two years ago when a group of health IT, consumer design and brand marketing professionals from a data company called Bick Group came together around a project at St. Joseph Health System in Orange County.
They were tasked with a three-year project to “free the data” from various silos within the health system and use it to create a unique user experience that would allow patients to constantly collaborate with their care teams on managing their health and healthcare.
The first phase involved creating a master patient index and implementing a health information exchange. In the second phase, now in progress, the team is working to create hubs where personal data and EMR data meet each other – in Dailey’s words, a “mashup between a personal health record, which is old and really hard to use, and Facebook, which is intuitive.”
The next phase will leverage those hubs to launch a series of programs targeting different segments of the health system’s patient population.
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In August, St. Joseph Health made an investment to spin off Datu into an independent company that would take the approach to other health systems, working with them to create customized white-label engagement platforms.
“Ultimately it’s about this intense personalized relationship between a consumer and providers that’s enabled by the data environment that we’re providing,” said Tom Mulhern, the company’s chief innovation officer. “Today’s portals allow you to look at data; the next phase is experiences that are personalized around what’s important to you at that moment.”
The company isn’t alone in its quest to create a cloud-based system that connects data from wireless health devices — that’s something big players like Qualcomm Life, Microsoft and the Center for Connected Health have been working on in different ways. But CEO Andy Parham said that a critical part of Datu is the user experience. “When this flood of data happens, we’ve got people who are experts in presenting that data in the best way to explain what’s going on with your numbers and that you have the tools to change those numbers,” he said.
As an example, let’s say a patient has just been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. “A lot of burden comes on their shoulders,” Mulhern explained. “The platform we’re putting together is going to permit, from day one of that diagnosis, that you are in a constant chat session with your care team.”
Dailey said Datu is exploring relationships with mobile health vendors, like the Mark Cuban-backed venture Validic, to be able to integrate more data sources. The idea is that the patient could stream readings from his iBGStar blood glucose meter to the platform so that his care team could see how he was doing in between appointments, and determine if proactive follow-up was necessary. The care team could also push out information to him through mobile, email, text, etc. — perhaps regarding new diabetes research that’s relevant to him or a support group meeting that’s coming up.
On the provider side, it would create one access point where a care team could view all of a patient’s information and communicate with him. From a broader view, it could also provide population health-level insights by allowing providers to see what communication methods and treatment paths are working in which groups of patients, Mulhern said.
As you can imagine, that kind of connectivity and analytics comes at a price. For a health system with 3 million patients and 2,500 clinician users, Parham estimates that connectivity and analytics would cost $3 million to $5 million annually, plus a one-time startup fee. And remember that the St. Joseph project spans three years.
The next step for the Boulder-based startup is rolling out in St. Joseph locations in west Texas, Southern California and Northern California this month. Parham said he expects to be working with four other health systems by May.
