COVID-19 THOUGHT LEADER Q&A
Mercy’s Use of Data as Real- World Evidence to Help Better Serve Patients During COVID
What is Mercy’s history of using
data as real-world evidence? With an aim of delivering better patient care, Mercy uses new clinical devices that promise a better outcome at a lower cost. Yet, historically, there has been little evidence to support these claims. That’s why Mercy set out to construct data sets from a decade of our extensive clinical data to verify if devices perform as promised. Back in 2009, Mercy was awarded an FDA grant to help deter- mine if data from the electronic medical record (EMR) system could be used as real-world evidence (RWE) of the safety and effectiveness of medical devices. This initiative included a collaboration across multiple organizations with the common goal of proving RWE could be used in tracking and monitoring device performance. For several years now, Mercy has leveraged our RWE to ana- lyze and drive better decisions related to clinical devices in patient care.
How did Mercy use RWE to
respond to the pandemic? The foundation Mercy laid with RWE provided a significant head start in data analytics as we began responding to COVID-19. Mercy was able to quickly step up and apply these capabilities to help care for patients while keeping co- workers safe during an unprecedented global pandemic. From the onset of COVID, Mercy focused on bringing to bear all the relevant data. We set up a command center, which was a daily connection of leaders across our health system to look at what was happening. To make fast decisions, the command center needed, at a glance, the number of available hospital and ICU beds, PPE inventory, ventilators, etc., across the entire health system. Using SAP tech- nologies, many different data sources were combined and consolidated into an organized, easy-to-read set of dash- boards. For example, by combining Mercy’s data with publicly available data, we could see dashboard views
of not just that snapshot in time but also future COVID projections to pre- dict best- and worst-case scenarios for better preparation.
How did Mercy validate its COVID
projections? We worked with neighboring health- care providers to share between us our de-identified data to better inform and validate each other’s analysis. COVID created unique challenges that made it necessary to break down traditional barriers between our healthcare sys- tems in sharing data. We learned valu- able lessons in doing so and saw the benefit of better informed patient care.
How is technology from SAP and Intel helping with Mercy’s RWE
projects? Using capabilities from SAP and Intel have helped us manage massive volumes of data from many differ- ent data sources with the necessary speed to deliver RWE in near real-time. Ultimately, it helps enable quick deci- sion making, which has been essential for Mercy and others in our commu- nities as we faced the challenges of COVID.
What are other potential uses for
Mercy’s RWE to address COVID? With a COVID vaccine coming, we plan to look to our RWE to also help track and monitor vaccine performance. Like previous active surveillance proj- ects that allowed us to detect early if a device is or is not working as expected, we’ll go about monitoring the safety and effectiveness of vaccines the same way.
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Walt Ellenberger
Senior Business Director, business development and strategic alliances healthcare
SAP Curtis Dudley
Vice President of Enterprise Analytics and Data Services
Mercy Technology
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 |
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