LAS VEGAS – Signet Accel has launched Avec, a commercial federated data integration platform designed to offer interoperability to healthcare organizations, the company announced at HIMSS16.

Avec enables analysis of complex, distributed healthcare data in a manner that is secure and protects the ownership and control of data at every site, Signet Accel said. It does not require changes in the process of collecting data, the manner in which data is stored, where data is stored or how data is structured, the vendor added.

Signet Accel’s Avec platform was created at The Ohio State University in collaboration with investigators and technologists across the globe, the company said. The platform was developed with an investment of more than 13 years and $20 million, it added.

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“We’re connecting data as it is and where it is,” said John Raden, Signet Accel CEO. “Providing physicians and researchers the ability to view, analyze and experiment with aggregated data from entirely disparate sources, globally, is a reality we provide our clients. We believe technology plays a central role in how data is used to cure disease.”

Some in the industry talk about interoperability as purely a technical problem, others as a policy or standards problem, and still others as a usability or user experience problem, said Philip Payne, MD, co-founder of Signet Accel and professor and chair of the department of biomedical informatics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

“True interoperability is when all three of these communities and their needs and approaches meet,” Payne said. “We’ve deliberately designed a platform that is useful to clinicians, researchers and decision makers—while also directly impacting patients, their families and their communities.”

Avec links and harmonizes disparate databases across healthcare, enabling researchers to identify patterns and trends over a large patient population and offering comprehensive insights into both research and patient treatment, Payne added. Robust repositories of connected data are key to realizing the promise of precision medicine, a research effort aimed at improving health and treating disease by accounting for patients’ individual differences, he said.

“We’re only just now seeing large systems partner to begin the long and arduous process of determining how to align, share and exchange data, but we want the industry to know that true interoperability is already here,” Raden said. “Avec connects data for our clients and enables them to safely share it, regardless of its starting point.”

Signet Accel clients include The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Alliance of Dedicated Cancer Centers, the Hairy Cell Leukemia Foundation, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs VINCI initiative in partnership with Hewlett-Packard, the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network, and a joint venture between Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals.

At HIMSS16, Signet Accel will be demonstrating Avec in both the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase and in booth 12550 of the main exhibit hall.

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT

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