InterSystems Corporation has launched the next generation of its InterSystems HealthShare strategic informatics platform for interoperability and active analytics. Designed originally for public health information exchanges (HIEs) at regional, state and national levels, HealthShare has been extended and re-architected to also deliver the advanced technologies needed by integrated delivery networks (IDNs).
The new version of HealthShare addresses the need in the healthcare field to enable access to up-to-the minute information and to help users more easily gain insight from unstructured content, Dominick Bizzarro, HealthShare global business manager, InterSystems, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
HealthShare is a unified platform that enables organizations to not only capture and share patient data, but also analyze, understand, and act on the data to deliver a new dimension of value. "While the previous generation of integration software focused on connecting systems at a transactional level, healthcare today requires new technologies that can intelligently aggregate and unlock patient data across systems to enable new connected care solutions," says Paul Grabscheid, InterSystems vice president of Strategic Planning. "With the new capabilities offered by HealthShare, it is now possible to drive informed actions that improve patient outcomes and operational efficiency."
To add value to connected care and enable the transformation to a data-based, patient-centric care delivery model, the new version of HealthShare includes enhancements in two key areas, says Bizzaro.
Knowledge delivery - HealthShare now includes patented InterSystems iKnow technology that makes it possible to retrieve and utilize unstructured healthcare data. iKnow technology can automatically discover the concepts within text, without the need for a pre-defined dictionary or other burdensome or costly set-up. HealthShare automatically analyzes documents and text, finds and unlocks the relevant relationships, and allows the user to quickly navigate to desired content. As a result, clinicians can much more efficiently identify vital information in a world where HIE networks proliferate and the data within them grows.
Citing industry statistics that approximately 80-90% of data in the healthcare sector is unstructured, Bizzaro notes that unstructured content can enhance users' understanding and interpretation of structured information. Examples of information hidden in unstructured documents can include notes on why a certain test was ordered, what someone was thinking at the time, and what is being considered as a next step. To provide this access and to do it in a timely and understandable manner is of great importance, he adds.
Active Analytics - HealthShare Active Analytics technology provides access to up-to-the-minute patient data to drive informed decisions that can improve outcomes. Using its built-in patient-centric data model, this HealthShare component continuously collects, aggregates, normalizes, and presents data from organizations throughout the care community. Active Analytics can deliver notifications to caregivers or launch clinical or operational processes based on rules invoked from a previous analysis. Featuring data modeling, intuitive tools for designing pivot tables, graphs and charts, and workbench design capabilities, HealthShare's Active Analytics aims to help uncover missed opportunities associated with purely retrospective analysis, without the high cost of creating and maintaining a data warehouse.
Timely access to relevant information is critical, for example, in emergency situations, in which new test results are needed quickly for treatment, for sharing information across various healthcare providers involved with a patient's overall care, and also in bio-surveillance where it is necessary to stay current on the spread of disease across regions or hospitals, Bizzaro explains.
The new version of HealthShare is available now. Visit www.intersystems.com/HS2012 for a close look at HealthShare's core capabilities.