Its February & HealthIT Heads to Orlando

We are speaking, and for the first time, at the IEEE International Conference on Biomedical & Health Informatics (BHI-2017) conference next week in Orlando, Florida on Friday, February 17th. This is the flagship conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) and immediately precedes the HIMSS 17 conference that we are also attending. HIMSS, of course, is the premier HealthIT conference and expo.

I say “we” as both our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Ram Peruvemba, and I are speaking. The fact that both of us are invited is an indication, least in the view of the organizers of the Special Session where we are giving our talk, that the topic merits and necessitates multiple speakers. The Special Session is entitled Big Data Analytics and Population Health Solutions and is led by our friend and colleague John Zaleski, Executive VP and Chief Informatics Officer of Bernoulli Health.

The Topic of our Talk

Our talks introduce to the general healthcare community the GeoHealth Dashboard that we have been developing over the past year and discussing the role it can play in Maryland’s All-Payer system.

My talk focuses on the use and applications of the GeoHealth Dashboard itself. The GeoHealth Dashboard is a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform that merges health data, demographic data, as well as social factors impacting health such as transportation networks and head start programs with a data analytic engine to enable improved decision making along a full spectrum of healthcare challenges.

GeoHealth Dashboard Applications

A few of the applications of the Dashboard we’ve been able to develop include:

• Capacity of the Healthcare System. Identifying areas with gaps in available health services (e.g., cancer treatment or behavioral health resources). The Dashboard provides a means to compare available healthcare resources with the expected incident rates of illnesses and population trends to identify both areas of under-capacity and over-capacity both now and into the future. This provides a data driven means of allocating healthcare resource. Hospitals and providers can identify locations where specific healthcare services are most needed.

• The growing opioid epidemic. The Dashboard can produce a view of opioid prescriptions and opioid-related health incidents (e.g., overdoses) to gain visibility into the movement of both prescription and illegal opioids throughout the state or region.

• Non-Emergency Medical Transportation. Using the GeoHealth Dashboard, a new solution for non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) was developed that can both reduce spend on Medicare-funded NEMT while simultaneously reducing hospital readmission rates for Medicare patients.

• Maryland’s All-payer System. More specifically to Maryland’s All-Payer system, the Dashboard can analyze Medicare/Medicaid claims data along with demographic data and trends to identify hospital-centric geographic regions for cost containment for Medicare and Medicare-Medicaid dual eligible patients.

This last point is where Ram comes in. Ram discusses how HealthIT solutions, and specifically our GIS-based population health data analytic solution, can help optimize the financial performance and improve the quality of our unique All-Payer system in Maryland.

We are excited to share our work with the community and gain their insights and feedback in Orlando and even after the conference – both of us also have papers that will publish in the conference proceedings.

For those in attendance in Orlando next week, our session is on Friday the 17th from 10:00am-11:10am in Salon 6-7.   Anyone interested in a one-on-one demo of the GeoHealth Dashboard or a discussion on its capabilities and specific applications, please feel free to contact me at agupta@healthsolutionsresearch.org.

And if you miss us in Orlando, we are also speaking about the GeoHealth Dashboard at the 4th Annual Advanced Healthcare Analytics Summit (AHA) in Boston, Mass in May.