Optum Labs, co-founded by the Mayo Clinic and Optum, announced four additional partners to its big data sharing effort in an attempt to find improvements in healthcare: Harvard Medical School Department of Health Care Policy, Medica Research Institute, University of Maryland, Baltimore and Merck.
Optum Labs, which is a division of UnitedHealthGroup’s Optum, is currently among the largest de-identified patient databases designed for open collaboration and research with the hopes of accelerating healthcare innovation. The research is linked to the clinical environment through prototyping and testing in Optum and partners’ care settings.
Partners of Optum Labs have access to information resources, proprietary analytical tools and scientific expertise to help drive the discovery of new applications, testing of new care pathways and other opportunities to drive innovation in wellness and care delivery.
In addition to the newly announced partners, Optum Labs has formed relationships with consumer advocate organization AARP, the American Medical Group Association, Boston Scientific, Boston University School of Public Health, Lehigh Valley Health Network, Pfizer Inc., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Tufts Medical Center and the University of Minnesota School of Nursing.
“Our growing base of partners enables Optum Labs to expand into additional areas of health care research, paving the way for new initiatives that can be directly translated to improvements in patient care,” Paul Bleicher, MD, PhD, CEO of Optum Labs, said in a statement. “We are excited by the diverse perspectives our partners are bringing to a growing number of research studies under way.”
