The Department of Health and Human Services has contracted with San Francisco-based Archimedes, a healthcare modeling company, to put high-powered mathematical analytics in the hands of its agencies, signaling "a new era of medical decision-making."

The technology will enable the agencies to research, analyze and evaluate the effects of specific healthcare interventions more quickly and accurately, Archimedes executives say.

The company bills the Archimedes Model, developed initially with support from Kaiser Permanente, as “the most advanced mathematical modeling tool available to answer complex questions on health and healthcare.”

Under the contract, HHS will make a new Web-based interface called the Archimedes Healthcare Simulator (ARCHeS) available to its agencies, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute and the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

The goal is to:

• analyze prevention activities and management of chronic conditions for patients;
• design guidelines, performance measures, and incentive programs, such as pay-for-performance;
• assess technologies and compare the effectiveness of different treatments;
• design clinical trials;
• analyze and improve health processes;
• forecast the costs of healthcare; and
• estimate the cost effectiveness of interventions.

HHS’ ability to offer agencies widespread access to the technology was spurred by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Pioneer Portfolio, which, in 2007, provided a $15.6 million grant to support the creation of ARCHeS, which makes the Archimedes Model more accessible and affordable for public policymakers and nonprofit users.

“When we initially made this grant, I said that the development of ARCHeS would usher in a new era in medical decision-making that we believe has the potential to transform health and healthcare,” said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “By getting ARCHeS in the hands of HHS and all of its agencies, we’ve taken a very big step toward realizing that potential. Our goal has always been to create access to this innovation for the public policymakers and researchers best positioned to use it to inform decisions that will improve health and healthcare for all Americans. We now see that happening.”

“The quality and cost of healthcare are determined by decisions made by policymakers, physicians and others. To make those decisions wisely, decision makers need to know the consequences of the different options they face,” said David Eddy, MD, founder and chief medical officer of Archimedes. “For a high proportion of decisions, the only feasible way to get the needed information is to use mathematical models that integrate existing evidence, and are validated against evidence. This agreement with HHS puts the analytical power of advanced healthcare modeling on the desks of decision makers in the federal government. By combining this tool with their own insights and experience, decision makers will be able to understand much better the effects of different policies, and be able to design policies that achieve the twin goals of improving quality and controlling costs.”

In one of a number of important analyses already performed by Archimedes, Kaiser Permanente used forecasts from the model as the impetus to launch a program to provide a bundle of aspirin, lovastatin (a cholesterol-lowering drug), and lisinopril (a blood pressure-reducing drug), to high-risk members. This analysis was used in informing the implementation of Kaiser Permanente’s ALL/PHASE program. The result was a more than 60 percent reduction in heart attacks and strokes over a two-year period.

As a result of HITECH Act and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the use of modeling and simulation platforms is in high demand for policymakers and researchers. Both of these laws include new requirements for use of data in the design of health benefits; comparative effectiveness of quality, cost, and outcomes; and evaluation of population health efforts. In March, the federal government launched a research initiative in big data computing for a number of agencies, including the National Institutes of Health.

"The federal government sees a growing need across all of its agencies for innovative resources to aid in research, policy analysis and evaluation,” said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park. "We’re excited that ARCHeS will now be available to staff across the Department of Health and Human Services. It gives us an important new tool to analyze a wide variety of health policy questions and quickly compare different scenarios and outcomes.”