IL Health System Unveils Partnership to Improve Data Analytics Capabilities

Illinois-based integrated health system Carle Health has partnered with healthcare data and analytics technology company Health Catalyst to advance its analytics capabilities and improve patient care.

The five-year agreement will strengthen the existing relationship between the two organizations and provide Carle Health with an all-access technology subscription and managed services in the areas of analytics, data management, reporting, and project management.

"Carle Health is excited to announce this novel partnership with Health Catalyst. When combined with our own clinical expertise, Health Catalyst will help us transform the way we use data to support organizational decisions and improve patient outcomes," said Matthew Kolb, chief operating officer at Carle Health, in the press release. "As a transformative health care system, it's important that we lay the groundwork to ensure we're able to provide the right solutions that blend data, analytics, and medical expertise to optimize the quality of care we provide for everyone who depend [sic] on us."

Beginning in January 2023, members of Carle Health’s Clinical and Business Intelligence (CBI) team will transfer employment to Health Catalyst, where they will receive additional training in data literacy and analytics. These team members will then provide data, analytics, and technology support to Carle Health, the press release states.

"We're grateful to have been a partner with such a high-performing health system as Carle these past two years, contributing to its data-driven healthcare transformation efforts," said Dan Burton, CEO of Health Catalyst, in the press release. "We are honored to have been chosen by Carle to continue supporting them in bringing more technology to complement and strengthen their healthcare services.”

This collaboration is one of several recent efforts to leverage data analytics and industry partnerships to support healthcare IT innovation.

This week, Rutgers University announced a multi-year collaboration agreement with medical technology company HeartSciences to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-based electrocardiogram (ECG) algorithms and expand the clinical value of an ECG for low-cost detection of heart disease.

The partnership seeks to use AI to make ECG a more valuable screening tool and is part of a broader effort to drive innovation in cardiology.

Other providers are using analytics to improve population health management.

New York-based federally qualified health center Morris Heights Health Center (MHHC) and population health management technology company the Garage have launched a partnership under which the health center will use the company’s platform to improve community care for its 50,000 patients in the Bronx.

Under the partnership, MHHC will use the Garage’s Software as a Service (SaaS) population health management platform to focus on improvements in care management. With the platform, MHHC can connect providers and care teams to facilitate real-time patient information exchange, referral management, secure messaging, patient tracking and communication, clinical data management, clinical integration, clinical intelligence, and clinical analytics.