A Mayo Clinic clinical team is launching a new company to provide clinical decision support tools for the ICU, operating room and emergency department. The startup is backed with $1.1 million in seed funding from Mayo Clinic and Silicon Valley investors The Social+Capital Partnership, and nonprofit Rock Health.

The idea behind the company Ambient Clinical Analytics is to take clinical decision support to the patient’s bedside. The technology gives clinicians real-time access to process-of-care information and analytics to help care providers make the best decisions.

The following technologies are at the core of Ambient Clinical Analytics’ analytics platform:

• AWARE (Ambient Warning and Response Evaluation) is a clinical EMR tool that reduces information overload by using analytics to filter relevant patient data and supporting best-care practices for ICUs and operating rooms.
• Mayo Clinic YES Board is a multi-patient management tool that provides real-time situational awareness for emergency departments and hospital pediatric departments.
• Syndromic Surveillance provides smart alerts or “sniffers” that address critical clinical problems such as sepsis.
• The Synthesis technology connects patients’ data with mobile devices. This is a component for both the YES Board and AWARE.

[See also: Mayo Clinic launches data-sharing lab.]

Mayo tapped Al Berning, a technology veteran of 20 years, to lead the company as CEO.

Berning led PEMSTAR to an IPO in 2000 and led Liquid Cool Solutions from 2007 to 2012. The founding clinical team from Mayo Clinic, including physicians from several specialties, will join him at Ambient Clinical Analytics.

“Healthcare providers need efficient and organized tools at their fingertips in order to increase patient safety," Berning said in a news release. "Ambient Clinical Analytics is providing the real-time bedside and emergency room technology to accomplish this, which in turn leaves both the provider and patient more satisfied. This is a unique opportunity to truly transform how patients are treated. We all desire an organized healthcare operation especially when the emergency department or ICU are involved. Ambient Analytics provides solutions developed by clinicians for clinicians to accomplish this.”

[See also: Mayo Clinic unveils pregnancy app.]

"The amount of data behind AWARE is vast, but unlike any other system I've used, AWARE shows me what I need to see, at the point of care, organized in the way I think," said John M. Litell, DO, attending physician, emergency and critical care medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant director of emergency medicine research at St. Vincent Hospital, said in a statement. "As a result, I can approach patients in a more standardized and organized fashion."

"The impetus behind creating AWARE was that I would arrive in the ICU and spend the first hours just coming to terms with basic patient facts," added Brian Pickering, MD, a founding clinical team member of the company. "Other physicians face the same situation. By applying technology to this situation, we found a way to hit the ground running. The application was designed to make transitions of care safer and more efficient."

Ambient Clinical Analytic offers two scientifically validated solutions. The first is the patented Septic Shock Sniffer and the second is the patent-pending Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury Sniffer. The solutions were developed by founding clinical team members Vitaly Herasevich, MD, and Ognjen Gajic, MD.

Vern Smith, MD, and Andy Boggust, MD, are also founding clinical team members of the company.

Pickering, Heresevich, Gajic, Smith and Boggust have financial interest in the products mentioned in this press release. Revenue Mayo receives is used to support its not-for-profit mission in patient care, education and research.