One year after UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) and subsidiary Optum opened Optum Labs as a collaborative research and development organization across life science and healthcare to improve patient care, it has added seven collaboration partners who will tap resources like a database of claims and electronic health record data from founding partner Mayo Clinic to help figure out how to best address needs for their own patient populations.
Among those collaboration partners across healthcare and life science are: Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, American Medical Group Association, Boston University School of Public Health, Tufts Medical Center, Lehigh Valley Health System and University of Minnesota School of Nursing. The AARP joined in December last year.
In a phone interview, Lehigh Valley Health Network CEO Dr. Ronald Swinfard said it was interested in developing tools for predictive analytics to do a better job of predicting patient outcomes. “They are learning from us because of our experience — they are good listeners and good developers.”
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
Since Optum’s integration of data crunchers Humedica last year to expand its big data and analytics muscle, former Humedica Chief Medical Officer Dr. Paul Bleicher was appointed the CEO of Optum Labs. Some of the vexing questions the lab is harnessing that analytics power to answer include analyzing ways to improve the diagnosis of hepatitis C and looking at the pancreatic cancer risk of GLP-1 inhibitors used to treat diabetes.
Among some of the population health issues under study is employee absenteeism. The lab aims to figure out what’s driving it, looking at such factors as allergies, lower back pain and depression.
Some of the studies at the center also focus on behavioral health. In a phone interview, Bleicher told MedCity News that its work with the AARP also includes looking at the impact of social isolation on health.
He pointed out that they were picked from among 85 organizations that have sought a partnership with Optum Labs.
Although it is not known primarily as a medical research institution, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was the first to play with IBM’s Watson software — some of which has been packaged and made available in some interesting healthcare collaborations of its own. The head of its computer science department, James Hendler, has been an early proponent of big data and the Semantic Web.
“The expectation of Optum is that we will achieve a sustainability and then we will have the opportunity to grow to as large as is appropriate. The idea is the partners will all share in one way or another the sustainability of the labs.”
Asked about its timeline for growth, Bleicher emphasizes that the center is not a numbers game. Think quality, not quantity.
“The focus is in bringing in those partners that will add to this excellent base that we have created that will be of increasing value to all the partners, not just Optum. We are expecting that we have a little circle of the kinds of partners we have targeted and they go from life science organizations to payers, government and consumer organizations, and employers. Our goal is to have this be the premier place to go.”
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