SAS to Build Cloud-Based Big Data Analytics Platform for Dignity Health

CARY, N.C., Aug. 19 — Business analytics leader SAS and Dignity Health, one of the largest health systems in the US, are joining forces to use big data and predictive analytics to transform the way patients receive care.

The Dignity Health-SAS collaboration will create a cloud-based, big data platform powered by a library of clinical, social and behavioral analytics. These analytics will help doctors, nurses and other health care providers better understand each patient and tailor care to improve health while reducing costs. In the short term, the two organizations will use the big data analytics platform to reduce readmission rates, determine best practices for addressing congestive heart failure and sepsis, manage pharmacy costs and outcomes, and create tools to improve each patient’s experience.

“In order to deliver the right care at the right place, cost and time for every patient, we must connect and share data across all our hospitals, health centers and provider network,” said Deanna Wise, Chief Information Officer at Dignity Health. “The SAS cloud-based analytics platform will help us better analyze data to optimize and customize our treatment for each patient and improve the care we deliver.”

Big data and analytic insights collected from the platform will help improve patient care and health outcomes at Dignity Health in the following areas:

• Care planning for individuals and populations, including predictive modeling and disease management.

• Insights to strengthen reimbursement models, with a focus on paying for outcomes.

• Measurement and transparency of performance data to drive best practices on outcomes and value.

Analytics will allow Dignity Health to assign a probability to future events like the risk of readmission, the likelihood of sepsis or kidney failure, and then apply best practices to intervene early and reduce the possibility of avoidable future complications and costs.

The platform powered by SAS will affect how physicians at Dignity Health’s 39-hospital system treat patients and how Dignity Health coordinates care among the more than 9,000 affiliated providers. The resulting improvements will help reduce costs, improve outcomes and prevent readmissions.

“Dignity Health and SAS share a common vision for the critical role that analytics will play in the future of health care delivery,” said Graham Hughes, MD, SAS Chief Medical Officer. “We will bring our best experts and leverage the unmatched power of SAS’ complete suite of analytics software to help Dignity Health establish a new benchmark for care delivery innovation, with a focus on improving patient health outcomes and controlling costs.”

SAS’ deep experience in supporting medical research combined with assets from health insurance and pharmaceutical industries will accelerate the availability and deployment of new analytic offerings for health care providers. SAS in-memory, high-performance analytics will enable the development of “just in time” sophisticated insights incorporated into point-of-care workflows. The software will also run in-memory analytics against a growing, systemwide, secure Hadoop store of structured and unstructured big data. Additionally, the ability to provide secure access to an ever-increasing library of analytic offerings in the cloud will, over time, allow even the smallest health care systems to benefit from the advanced analytics and associated best practices developed as a result of this collaboration.