Cerner Corp. drew about 11,000 people to Kansas City this week as part of the annualCerner Health Conference.
CEO Neal Patterson, who gave the keynote address at the North Kansas City company’s annual health conference Tuesday, spoke to thousands about the personal influences that drive him to innovate, the future of health care and the barriers he still plans to overcome.
1. The power of predictive modeling
Patterson started off the presentation by sharing the stories of two women: one who died of septic shock, and one who recovered and survived.
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
Sepsis is a severe blood infection and is highly treatable when detected early. However, it’s the tenth-leading cause of death in the United States with only a 35 percent to 50 percent chance of survival. Additionally, it costs hospitals $20 billion a year, according to a 2013 study.
Patterson’s sister-in-law, Linda, died of septic shock in 2006. It was then that Patterson decided to make it a priority to “save Linda’s life.”
“I can’t save her life, but I want to prove that in that community we can do that,” he said.
Fast-forward to 2014 and more than 100 clients are using a Cerner-developed algorithm to detect sepsis early.
Julie Filbeck, a critical care and rapid response nurse manager with North Kansas City Hospital, shared a story about a woman who went into septic shock on one of the hospital’s busiest days of the year. Cerner’s system alerted the hospital to the woman’s worsening condition, they took the necessary measures to step in and today, the woman is alive and well.
Patterson also returned to Anthony, Kan., where Linda received care.
“So I’m back for harvest and I have my office set up a meeting with the CEO of the local hospital,” he said. “I met him at the drug store. That’s where you do it in the country. I said I want to make you an offer you can’t refuse. I want our system in this community, because I want to check that off my list. Save Linda’s life.”
Now, Patterson has plans to expand that predictive model to even more conditions — possibly 1,000 by the end of the decade.
“Social determinants of health are very, very powerful,” he said. “A kid’s grades in grade school, evidence says, is a predictor of health. Your neighborhood you live in is a predictor of health. So big data, social, mobile — there’s an entire ecosystem that is going to grow up. … The system’s intelligence is going to significantly increase. And we’re going to basically get from a reactive system to a more predictive system.”
2. Interoperability is key
Patterson shared another personal story to illustrate the need for interoperability between health care providers and systems.
His wife, Jeanne Patterson, was previously diagnosed with breast cancer that metastasized into her brain. The couple sought treatment at cancer centers across the country, and Jeanne always asked for copies of her records, which she toted around in a number of bags from office to office.
“She’s Wonder Woman,” Patterson said, noting that her journey helped inspire his mission to make health records easier to use. “She’s my hero in how to do all this. It’s on my list. I’m gonna get this done. But we all have a role to play in this.”
A person should be able to show up to a hospital and access all of their health records, no matter which hospital or provider created them and no matter which technology system or EHR vendor they use, Patterson said.
He said there are three things that need to happen to fix health record access and make sure they’re truly interoperable:
- an identification system (think about your email address or an ID number, he said);
- a record location system; and
- a way to create patient consent.
“Those three things are very doable,” Patterson said.
In March 2013, Cerner (Nasdaq: CERN), along with five other health information technology companies, launched Commonwell Health Alliance to help move toward interoperability. Patterson said Tuesday he was optimistic that Meditech, formally known as Medical Information Technology Inc., would also join. However, he also alluded to the fact that competitor Epic Systems Corp. has still yet to join, calling it a “really big black hole” in the system.
He said that interoperability is too important of a mission on which to seek a competitive business advantage, admonishing those who aren’t working toward it.
“I tell you what, you’re immoral,” he said. “That is wrong. There is a right and wrong thing. Compasses are not always aligned.”
3. Open up EHRs
To further interoperability, Patterson said it would become increasingly important to open up electronic health records systems so that developers could create applications that work on all EHRs.
“Think about what happens when you open data, when it becomes available to all of us, to the private side to do innovation,” Patterson said.
He gave the example of GPS. Global positioning systems were originally developed by the military for government applications, but the Reagan Administration decided to open up some of that technology to private industry. That evolved into the GPS systems that most Americans carry around in their smartphones.
“When you unleash data it unleashes innovation,” Patterson said. “So I think opening EMRs will unleash an incredible amount of innovation.”
Date: November 04, 2014