Dive Brief:

• Health Catalyst has launched a new tool meant to help hospitals detect, predict and prevent adverse incidents using data analytics.
• Built on the Health Catalyst Data Operating System, the Surveillance Module is the latest addition to the company’s Patient Safety Monitor suite.
• The new module — developed over two years at a cost of more than $50 million — is a trigger-based system facilitated by DOS capabilities, including predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. It works by identifying patterns that could trigger a safety event and proposing strategies to reduce the risk to patients.

Dive Insight:

Hospitals are looking for ways to use Big Data to leverage concrete improvements. Patient safety tools like this are a good way to start.

According to a recent Frost & Sullivan report, patient safety poses a major investment opportunity over the next four years. The report identifies the biggest adverse risks and value propositions as medication safety, antibiotic resistance, patient diagnostics safety, sepsis, cybersecurity of medical devices and patient data privacy, and unnecessary emergency department admissions.

Along with the Surveillance Module rollout, Health Catalyst said it will offer patient safety professional services, including safety data reviews, vulnerability assessments, culture safety assessments and outcomes improvement services.

The company has also applied to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for certification as a Patient Safety Organization. Being listed as a PSO would allow Health Catalyst clients to collect and analyze patient safety events without fear of litigation, the company said.

Future additions to the Patient Safety Monitor suite will target risk prediction, improvement tracking and decision support.

The surveillance tool’s launch comes as more digital health vendors are looking to scale up in the clinical provider space, where there could be big returns for products that improve outcomes, increase workflow efficiencies and, with luck, hold down overall costs as well.

A key challenge is gaining physicians’ trust. Providers want products that have been run through the clinical gauntlet and been proven accurate and reliable.

“Doctor’s main pain points are lack of time, huge work loads, dealing with bad technology and a reimbursement model that doesn't reward the right things,” Kirti Patel, an obstetrician/gynecologist and digital health startup adviser based in Massachusetts, told Healthcare Dive last year. “Highly prized qualities would be solutions that save time, decrease the physician workload, improve interaction with technologies and harness technology to aid the clinician in diagnosis and treatment that ultimately leads to better outcomes for patients.”