In today's digital world, electronic patient data is growing exponentially and moving faster than healthcare organizations can imagine. At the same time, clinicians suffer from information overload alongside dwindling time and resources.

Now more than ever, the pressure is building to harness the power of 'big data' to help clinicians make faster, patient-centric decisions that increase quality of care and enhance health outcomes all while decreasing costs.

Sounds great right? Especially to the critical care domain, where time is priceless and scarce, and fiscal concerns represent an annual cost to the U.S. economy in excess of $260 billion and account for 46% of total inpatient costs at UMHS, which is above the 40% national average.

For these very reasons, MCIRCC's core initiative is to shift health care analytics and clinical decision support (CDS) from theory to practice and we're not alone in this health IT race.

According to HealthIT.gov, CDS provides clinicians, staff, patients or other individuals with knowledge and person-specific information, intelligently filtered or presented at appropriate times, to enhance health and health care.

Historically, CDS applications have operated as components of comprehensive electronic health record (EHR) systems - in other words, retrospective data repositories or order entry systems. 

However, the next generation of CDS tools seeks to incorporate advanced data processing systems capable of discovering and harnessing actionable insights from disparate sources of medical data and leveraging these insights for diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics.

We all know money talks so it's no surprise that fiscal concerns are a leading driver in the development of CDS tools. But, clinical trends also have a seat at the CDS table. Clinicians want a platform that helps balance the art of medicine with evidence-based medicine while researchers hunger for access to clean, high fidelity data to test and validate hypotheses or to examine data in a way never before possible to reveal health solutions.

As summarized by HealthIT.gov, CDS offers a number of important benefits, including:

As an academic medical center with critical care costs in excess of the national average and ongoing capacity challenges, the UMHS has the potential to realize significant and immediate benefits from a critical care CDS tool.

In a nutshell, MCIRCC's CDS platform will aggregate disparate patient health information - static and real-time - across care touch points for analysis and optimization enabling clinicians to make faster decisions and implement personalized, patient-centric treatment options at the point of care.

Bear in mind, this description simplifies what is a highly sophisticated and complex heath IT tool to a functional concept. Key challenges for implementation include:

Healthcare has lagged behind the retail and financial sectors in the use of big data but the gap is closing and closing fast. As an institution, now is not the time to drop the ball. Data is king and the more hard evidence we have the better decisions we can make as clinicians, researchers, scientists, administrators and patients.

We've had just a couple of Innovation Underground events since MCIRCC launched last fall, and as we suspected, there is nothing small about the small talk at these gatherings.

It's an opportunity to connect with others who are interested in finding ways to form new ideas, make ideas even better, and bring those ideas to life. Finding ways to move ideas forward doesn't just happen at a lab bench or a desk. It can also happen over a casual conversation after work on what seemed like a regular Thursday. 

That's what happened when cardiologist, Brahmajee Nallamothu met research investigator, Ashwin Belle, and associate professor, Kayvan Najarian, both with MCIRCC's Biosignal-Image and Computational Core, at the last Innovation Underground event. Nallamothu says, "I sat down next to them with a beer and just shared what I was working on. There were immediate 'bulbs' that went off for me as I heard them describe their earlier work in image processing and analysis. I had been struggling with issues in my own work, which focuses on novel methods of assessing healthcare quality in cardiovascular disease, and been reaching out to experts at other universities and even industry partners." 

This is exactly what this event is about. We understand that every bit of progress in a project is important. Different points of view from multiple disciplines can make all the difference. Nallamothu believes this kind of connection is, "...fundamental to great science and innovation. It is critical to break out of our usual patterns of work and engage with investigators in other disciplines. What is special about the Underground Event is that it provides an easy atmosphere to discuss your work and seek collaboration." 

Nallamothu is moving forward in developing his prototype product, Computer Assisted Diagnosis of Coronary Angiography with the help and expertise of new collaborators, Belle and Najarian. 

The easy exchange of ideas and shared passion for work. This is what Innovation Underground gatherings are all about. 

Please join us for our next event: Wednesday, April 30, 5:00pm-7:00pm, in the MCIRCC Ideation Lab, NCRC Bldg. 10, Room A112.

This time, we're taking Innovation Underground above ground, to highlight the cool work being done by you, our members, and to introduce you to our newest resource, the MCIRCC Ideation Lab. 

This is a 'show & tell' for our scientific innovators with some food and brews to catalyze the collaborative energy needed to transform the face of critical care. In addition, MCIRCC will have a hands-on Google Glass demo for attendees to test drive in hopes of inspiring the next critical care breakthrough innovation.