Duke Health, nference Partner to Advance Medical Research, Patient Care

Duke Health and software company nference announced a collaboration aimed at accelerating research and improving patient care by leveraging the company’s advanced analytics platform.

According to the press release, using advanced analytics will help promote new scientific breakthroughs and “transform healthcare by making biomedical knowledge computable.” In doing so, the organizations hope to improve community health.

“As an academic health system, Duke Health’s mission is to advance the health of our community through innovation and the rapid translation of groundbreaking research,” said A. Eugene Washington, MD, chancellor for health affairs at Duke and president and CEO of Duke University Health System, in the press release. “This innovative alliance will empower our expert faculty, clinicians and staff to achieve new medical breakthroughs, share insights and knowledge, and better collaborate with peers in health care and other industries who share our values and seek to relieve suffering and improve lives.”

The press release further states that the analytics technologies will help expand the health system’s research capabilities in health analytics science and speed up the process of developing and implementing evidence-based medicine.

“The average time for life-saving research to get from the bench to bedside, and then to our communities, can take up to 17 years,” said Jeffrey Ferranti, MD, senior vice president, and chief digital officer at Duke Health, in the press release. “During this time, many patients miss out on access to next-generation cures, and we have a responsibility to lead in bringing these cures to patients faster.”

The partnership is expected to grow and evolve in the coming years. Stakeholders hope that this growth will provide additional advanced tools to improve patient care and modernize medical research, the press release states.

This is the latest partnership a provider has undertaken with nference to improve healthcare.

In September, Mayo Clinic and nference expanded their 12-year artificial intelligence (AI)-based collaboration with the launch of a new platform designed to leverage de-identified EHR data to increase access to data-derived insights with the aim of improving research, drug discovery, and clinical care.

The platform, known as nSights, collects real-time, anonymous data, such as clinical notes, electrocardiograms, and radiology images, for clinical research and analysis. Under the collaboration, the two organizations have created a Mayo Clinic-branded version of nSights, called Mayo Clinic Platform_Discover, which offers analytics, data exploration, and other features, like algorithm development, across multiple specialties, including cardiology, oncology, and immunology.

Duke Health has also been spearheading efforts to ensure that analytics and other technologies are used responsibly in healthcare.

In an interview with HealthITAnalytics in February, leaders from the Duke Institute for Health Innovation, Mayo Clinic, and DLA Piper discussed their work within the Health AI Partnership. The three organizations and other stakeholders launched the partnership in December 2021 to help healthcare organizations navigate the AI software market and establish best practices for safe, secure, and ethical AI deployment.

They noted that to deploy healthcare AI responsibly, stakeholders must commit to collaboration with one another, consider security, privacy, and ethics-related risks, and thoroughly understand the technology’s use cases in the industry.