Five Reasons Why Health Catalyst Acquired Medicity and What It Means for Interoperability, as Explained by Dale Sanders, President of Technology

Editor’s Note: Following theHealth Catalyst acquisition of Medicityin July 2018, we sat down with Health Catalyst President of Technology, Dale Sanders, to learn more about the reasons for the acquisition, the state of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), the limitations of current healthcare technology, and how Medicity’s technologies strengthen the Health Catalyst Data Operating System (DOS™) and improve interoperability, helping to change the digital trajectory of healthcare.

First, and most obvious, it’sthe data content．当您将Health Catalys世界杯葡萄牙vs加纳即时走地t的大量数据内容与Medicity的几pb数据相结合时，它为我们的机器学习算法创建了非常有价值的额外训练数据来源。我们已经拥有了业内表现最好的机器学习模型，这一点也不夸张。将Medicity的数据内容添加到训练集将使我们更进一步。除了HIE环境中的数据内容外，流经HIE的数据流量模式使我们有机会通过使用消息在HIE网络中过渡时的元数据来分析护理的过程和时间。因此，我们既对HIE数据的内容感兴趣，也对HIE网络中有关事务的元数据感兴趣。在一个相关的注意，HIE供应商一直努力为他们的客户提供负担得起的，复杂的，纵向分析。HIEs根本不具备当今医疗保健分析环境所需的数据广度。HIEs具有临床意义上的数据深度(大量记录和交易)，但在更大的医疗保健交付环境中没有广泛的数据，例如财务、成本、患者结果和供应链数据。世界杯葡萄牙vs加纳即时走地Health Catalyst在我们的客户站点上具有上述所有类别的数据广度和数据深度。 We hope that Medicity’s existing client base will find the combination of Medicity’s HIE capabilities with Health Catalyst’s analytics capabilities, a very appealing new combination; one that some of Medicity’s clients have been asking for, for years.

Second, and I think most people will find this unusual, we value thedata governance expertisethat Medicity brings to the table. More and more, Health Catalyst is commoditizing the technology associated with healthcare analytics and decision-support. But it’s very difficult to commoditize the human, legal and organizational aspects of data governance. The HIE vendors were the first to deal with data governance issues across organizational boundaries, state boundaries, and regional boundaries. And when I talk about data governance, I’m not just talking about the usual things like data access rights, security, privacy, data sharing, and data standards. I’m also talking about the legal relationships that exist between these organizations that allow them to share data and I’m also referring to the variability in state legislation for compartmented healthcare data, such as HIV and behavioral health data. That’s a complicated world and Medicity has been involved in it, across 35 states. And finally, I’m also talking about the economics of data governance. For example, the funding models among the participating organizations in an HIE network that have enabled many of Medicity’s HIE networks to be economically sustainable. In a fee-for-service world where data sharing between organizations may actually hurt your financial bottom line, the economics of data governance among Medicity and its clients are pretty impressive.

Third, we value Medicity’s7 x 24 real-time cloud operationsexpertise, both the strength of their operations as well as their technology. As you might have heard at Health Catalyst, we are developing and deploying a Data Operating System that is conceptually similar to the combination of an HIE and a classic enterprise data warehouse. The Data Operating System is the convergence of those two functions, plus more. Our Cloud Services and technology are more familiar with the traditional uptime and availability requirements of a data warehouse. We need to brush up our operations and technology to achieve the same level of high-availability and high-performance that Medicity achieves in their cloud operations and apply those to our cloud and the Data Operating System.

Fourth, Medicity’sexpertise in real-time EHR integration．正如我前面提到的，我们正在开发和部署的数据操作系统是一个事务处理和分析处理应用程序开发平台的组合。世界杯厄瓜多尔vs塞内加尔波胆预测在2018年8月，我们将很快能够通过我们的数据操作系统将单记录交易从A点移动到B点，就像今天的HIEs一样。我们还拥有一种新兴的能力，可以将分析结果嵌入到电子病历的工作流程中。我们非常重视Medicity开发的智能能力和技术，该技术可以在客户之间可靠地移动单级记录，并与emr交互，将数据插入到护理点。我们计划将Medicity的教训和经验整合到数据操作系统的实时、点对点交易数据移动能力中，并将我们所谓的“闭环分析”加强到EMR中。

Fifth, Medicity’s presence andexpertise in the loosely affiliated, community ambulatory care management space．我们在临床整合网络领域还不是一个强有力的竞争者。我们失去了我们参与竞争的绝大多数采购。我们在这个空间的损失有几个根本原因，但很大程度上可以归因于缺乏HIE。在一天结束的时候，CINs正在寻找emr之间相对简单的数据集成，在患者接触的层面上，有足够的临床质量分析来满足CIN的法律要求。在这些采购中，我们提供了过多的分析，而对于HIE提供的数据集成类型，我们却什么都没有提供。使用我们的旧Health 世界杯葡萄牙vs加纳即时走地Ca世界杯厄瓜多尔vs塞内加尔波胆预测talyst平台，我们无法提供HIE功能，所以CINs经常把我们从考虑范围中剔除。你可以争辩说我们没有必要为了满足CIN市场的弱点而收购HIE。我们可以更容易地与Medicity合作而不是收购他们来满足需求。但考虑到我们此次收购的其他四个动机，能够缓解我们的弱点，成为临床集成网络领域的一个更强的竞争者，只是增加了价值。

Q: Finally, interoperability has been top-of-mind for several years among CIOs and law makers alike. How would an acquisition such as this help push interoperability for the entire industry?

We are a very mission-driven company; most of Health Catalyst teammates have worked in healthcare operations for many years and we are tired of the status quo. We want to make a difference. I think anyone who knows healthcare would agree that we need to be more data driven, more digital. At Health Catalyst, we’ve created significant improvements in analytics and data-driven healthcare. We are not finished, but we’ve made progress and we’ve pushed other vendors to raise their game, too. Likewise, I think anyone who knows healthcare would agree that we need to be more interoperable. Analytics and interoperability are two sides of the same data coin. We know healthcare data better than any group of people in healthcare. Most of the problems with interoperability can be traced back to two things: (1) The non-standard manner in which EHRs are deployed, especially at the data and terminology layers, which forces a document-based data exchange model rather than granular data; and (2) The economics of healthcare in the U.S. still don’t drive a need for interoperability. In fact, there are economic disincentives to support interoperability. It’s a grand thought to assume that Health Catalyst can affect these causes, but we will try. The bottom line is this: Somebody needs to make a difference and if Health Catalyst can’t do it from a vendor perspective who understands healthcare data, I’m not sure anyone can.

Additional Reading

Would you like to learn more about this topic? Here are some articles we suggest:

1. Critical Healthcare M&A Strategies: A Data-driven Approach
2. Healthcare Analytics Platform: DOS Delivers the 7 Essential Components
3. 5 Reasons Healthcare Data Is Unique and Difficult to Measure