Mayo partners with Optum to mine data

BOSTON--Mayo Clinic took a big leap of faith partnering with Optum Labs, said Cris Ross, CIO, speaking at the Medical Informatics World Conference on April 29.

The partnership involves Mayo giving one of its largest payers “inside information” on episodes of patient care. They agreed to giving Optum all its clinical data deidentified in a safe repository and matching it with claims history. “We became convinced that the firewalls were firm and the protections in place would make it extremely difficult to breach that confidentiality,” Ross said.

In addition to codified data, Optum is running Mayo’s other data through natural language processing to generate data that can be put into structured data formats, he said. The entire effort will “allow us to understand the true progression of chronic disease and acute issues across organizational boundaries to understand outcomes of care over time. The project also will allow for the ability to quickly conduct proof of concept studies and rapid turnaround times on research projects.

“The goal is to focus research efforts on change that can achieve higher value for patients,” Ross said. The partnership is “a bet on our part that the data will prove that we can provide longer lifetime quality of care as opposed to episodic care. That’s the big bet.”

Ross suggested that his audience keep an eye on Optum because the partnership is “a fascinating research event. It’s the first time people can put that kind of massive data in one place and researchers have access to do studies. Interesting things are going to come out of it. It's a huge research sandbox.”

Ross explained some of the security measures taken on the data including both parties hashing their data to deidentify. Then, they found a way to link data in a clean room that nobody can access. Another protection is the separation of deidentified combined data from the originating data. A series of business rules create that separation to ensure that no one can access both sets of data simultaneously, he said. “We went through dozens and dozens of hours of deidentification and linking activity.”

Mayo believes Optum will produce two kinds of results: general research to publish and packaged clinical pathways that can be sold. They're not reselling anyone's data, Ross said, but the company thinks it can create condensed guidance as a byproduct of its research efforts. Mayo Clinic would benefit from any sales as well so the organization hopes Optum is "wildly successful."