Duke Health Announces AI-Driven Healthcare Transformation Collab

Duke Health and analytics company SAS announced that they have formalized a letter of intent to explore artificial intelligence (AI)- and cloud-driven healthcare solutions.

According to the press release, these solutions will support healthcare transformation by supporting health services research and health system business operations. The intended collaboration will also bolster Duke Health’s whole-person care model through initiatives to improve health equity, care delivery, and patient outcomes.

"At Duke Health, our vision for advancing patient care is to deliver tomorrow's health care today," said Jeffrey Ferranti, MD, senior vice president and chief digital officer for Duke Health, in the press release. "With their many decades of experience developing analytics solutions that lead to bold discoveries and drive progress, SAS is an ideal partner to further our mission of advancing health together."

The collaboration combines Duke Health’s expertise in developing, testing, and deploying analytics models for use in the clinical setting with SAS’ experience with integrating genomic, clinical, claims, and social data into AI solutions.

"The need to transform health care is more urgent than ever, and SAS wants to be at the forefront of this evolution by increasing patient access to technologically advanced care and ultimately improving population health," said Gail Stephens, vice president of Health Care and Life Sciences at SAS. "We are eager to move forward with Duke Health and leverage SAS analytics to create a healthier world for all people."

This is the latest collaboration Duke Health has joined to drive healthcare transformation through data analytics.

In January, the health system partnered with software company nference to advance medical research and patient care.

Leveraging the company’s advanced analytics platform, Duke aims to promote new scientific breakthroughs and improve community health via expanded research capabilities in health analytics science. The collaboration also seeks to speed up the process of developing and implementing evidence-based medicine.

These partnerships are part of a larger effort by Duke and other organizations to not only advance the use of analytics in healthcare, but also ensure that such technologies are implemented responsibly.

Last year, leaders from the Duke Institute for Health Innovation, Mayo Clinic, and DLA Piper discussed responsible AI deployment in healthcare and the work of the Health AI Partnership in an interview with HealthITAnalytics.

The partnership, launched in December 2021, seeks to help healthcare organizations navigate the AI software market and establish best practices for responsible deployment of these technologies in healthcare, such as stakeholder collaboration, understanding health AI’s use cases, and considering risks related to ethics, privacy, and security.