The healthcare collaboration software vendor Apervita announced on Tuesday that it has added Carta Healthcare's AI-powered data abstraction technology to its platform's interoperability layer.   

The companies say they aim to have the feature enhance Apervita's quality measurement and clinical intelligence capabilities.  

WHY IT MATTERS  

Unstructured data in electronic health records, which may comprise 80% of information, can present challenges to comprehension, analysis, data management and interoperability.   

These in turn can impact quality score accuracy and reimbursement, the organizations say.  

With that in mind, Apervita's new tool will use a combination of technology, people and processes to analyze patient records for quality reporting and clinical insights.  

The technology uses AI-enabled natural language processing to pull data from medical records, which are then validated by nurse data abstraction professionals – with a goal toward reducing the amount of time needed for abstraction.   

The companies argue that manual data abstraction, particularly where quality measures are concerned, eats into time clinicians could be spending on patient care.  

"Provider organizations with great quality scores often have armies of chart abstractors. However, smaller and medium-sized organizations often only have the resources to do the bare minimum of chart abstraction," said Rick Howard, Apervita chief product officer, in an email to Healthcare IT News.    

"Carta Healthcare’s AI-assisted technology paired with Apervita’s platform will help all organizations, regardless of size, to be able to have complete patient information," Howard said.  

The combination of AI and people power, say the organizations, also contributes to greater accuracy. As one example, Apervita points to conditions like sepsis, which can be detected in records from indicators such as "yellow wound."   

"Abstracting clinical content from unstructured fields in the EHR allows Apervita greater access to data to accurately measure and improve quality," said Howard in a statement. "We selected Carta Healthcare as a partner because we believe its technology is unique, will increase data accuracy and save documentation costs for providers."  

THE LARGER TREND  

Studies have shown that unstructured data has great predictive power when it comes to clinical research.   

Of course, sifting through that data can be a challenge, which is why many software heavy-hitters have begun to turn to AI for assistance.   

Such tools can also help health IT leaders spot what one expert called "nightmares" hiding in unstructured data – including potentially sensitive personal information that might be unwittingly shared.  

ON THE RECORD  

"Carta Healthcare’s AI technology and data collection processes – along with Apervita’s next-generation quality measurement and clinical insights across healthcare stakeholders – will ensure that the correct data solves real issues in healthcare," said Matt Hollingsworth, Carta Healthcare CEO, in a statement.

Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Twitter: @kjercich
Email: kjercich@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.