Precision medicine startup Progknowse is working with three health systems to use machine learning technology for development of predictive algorithms to provide precision medicine to patients.

WHY IT MATTERS
The three participating health providers include Baltimore's LifeBridge Health, St. Luke's University Health Network in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Riverside Health System in Newport News, Virginia. 

Progknowse will use Premier's PremierConnect platform to access national data sets, which include de-identified clinical outcomes data on approximately 45% of all patient discharges in the U.S.

These algorithms can then be used to help advance and personalize treatment based on clinical information, including the individual genetic information of specific patients.

Premier's predictive analytics capabilities are designed to support precision medicine and personalized care delivery, offering to access data sets and genomic information to create a broader healthcare database for data scientists to analyze.

By combining the Premier platform and its large database with predictive machine learning models from Progknowse, health systems could be able to better develop and provide precision medicine to their patients.

The anonymized clinical and administrative data completely protects the privacy of individuals and Progknowse noted the data is accessed within a secure development space.

THE LARGER TREND
Precision medicine  includes applications across diagnostics, prevention and screening that takes into account individual variabilities in genes, environment, and lifestyle for every individual.

Use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to build predictive algorithms can also help more accurately measure and predict patient outcomes based on thousands of individual predictors.

Particularly useful for oncology, precision medicine is designed to help match each patient with the treatment that can work best for them.

The University of Missouri System and University of Missouri Health Care recently announced a partnership with Siemens Healthineers to establish the new Alliance for Precision Health.

Major health systems such as Cleveland Clinic and Geisinger are also continuing to innovate the ways artificial intelligence can help foster individualized treatments.

ON THE RECORD
"These kinds of innovations and strategic partnerships enable us to enhance care for the patients and communities we serve," said Daniel J. Durand, chief innovation officer and vice president of research at LifeBridge, in a statement.

He noted collaborating with Progknowse would provide the organization with access to advanced capabilities such as predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. "This in turn help ensure all patients receive care that is uniquely tailored to their biology, personal needs and preferences," he said.

"This partnership combines the skills and resources necessary to access data sets and genomic information to create a much broader, national healthcare database for data scientists to analyze," said Leigh Anderson, president of performance services at Premier, in a statement.

Anderson noted that once developed, the resulting output is expected to allow the company to offer discrete analytics as a syndicated service to their members, helping to put precision medicine within the reach of a number of health system, including smaller providers with limited budgets.

Nathan Eddy is a healthcare and technology freelancer based in Berlin.
Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com
Twitter: @dropdeaded209