Yale researchers tapping into emerging secure cloud platform for sharing patient data
Yale researchers are working with a platform, dubbed Hugo, to mobilize patients so they can help with medical research, by allowing them to share their personal health information with researchers, via a cloud-based platform. Hugo was announced last May and is still in the testing phase.
According to Yale researchers, the platform is “highly secure,” and allows patients to draw records from multiple electronic health records held by a patient’s various healthcare providers. Hugo then synchronizes them with a research database.
“This could be a game changer,” says Harlan Krumholz, a developer of Hugo, and professor of medicine and epidemiology and public health at Yale School of Medicine. Krumholz is also the director of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) at Yale-New Haven Hospital. “Hugo harnesses the very latest in digital health technology and puts patients in the center, making them true research partners.”
Anyone who is registered with a patient portal can participate in the testing phase of Hugo. The platform is IOS- and Adroid-compatible, and Stella Technology is providing the architecture and development for Hugo.
Krumholz and Allen Hsiao, MD, associate professor of pediatrics and of emergency medicine and chief medical information office for Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Health System, are leading the first research study that will use Hugo. They will examine hospital readmission and emergency department use after discharge.
The Yale Center for Clinical Investigation, Yale School of Medicine, Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Yale Medical Group are providing support for the study. The study is also partially funded by the Yale Clinical and Translational Science Award grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health.
“The time is right to strengthen knowledge generation in medicine through partnerships with people, who are positioned to contribute their perspectives and their health-related data in ways that can improve their own health – and pay it forward for the health of future generations,” Krumholz said. “The future of knowledge generation in learning health systems and in biomedical research is about to be turbocharged by a disruption that flips the traditional approach on its head … and starts with recognizing the critical role that people and their health data assets can play.”
Krumholz added that the old way of generating knowledge is, for the most part, “too slow, too expensive, and too often off the mark on what is needed.”
The old way is about to give way to a new approach, one that “genuinely involves people as partners – recognizes their expertise in their health and illness – and the value of their personal health data,” he adds.
Krumholz, along with Lin Wan, co-founder and chief technology officer at Stella Technology, will share the story of how the Hugo beta-test is promoting research and empowering patients in the HIMSS17 session, “What’s next: People-powered knowledge generation from digital,” on Feb. 20 from 12-1 pm EST in Room W304A.
HIMSS17 runs from Feb. 19-23, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center.
This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.
