Prescription for US healthcare system: SAS

The future of healthcare holds great opportunity for SAS

Imagine a world where the patient can use an Internet-based platform to share his or her health and medical history records with all of their physicians, specialists and insurers. Imagine them being able to upload their fully sequenced genome to the Web and use SAS technology to analyze the potential benefits and risks of medications and procedures, determine their likelihood for developing a certain condition and assess how effective a certain treatment would be on their condition based on clinical trial data. That vision of the world is one in which the global health system is personalized, predictive, preventive and participatory.

That world is not far away.

During his keynote presentation at the fifth annual SAS Healthcare & Life Sciences Executive Conference, John D. Halamka, MD, MS, CIO of Harvard Medical School and Chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network, introduced the future of patient-engaged healthcare. He gave the example of Google Health as an application that allows users to collect, store and manage their personal health records. Applications like Google Health also permit members of the healthcare industry to access and use the records to improve the patients’ quality of care, while ensuring privacy and security.

According to Halamka, the future of healthcare could bring statistical conversations into the doctors’ office and put more healthcare decisions in the hands of patients, but much collaboration and standardization is needed to get there. Collaboration across the healthcare and life sciences industry was a key theme of the conference, entitled Transforming Healthcare through Patient-Centric Insights.

FDA of the future
Keynote presenter Andrew von Eschenbach, MD, an oncologist by training and cancer survivor who was appointed Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006, provided conference attendees a view into the future of the FDA, including details on current initiatives and the challenges facing the agency.

According to von Eschenbach, the FDA’s current structure is antiquated. It uses 20-year-old equipment and a siloed, fragmented system. He said the FDA is overhauling its information technology infrastructure in order to facilitate cross-agency interaction, automated analysis, adherence to standards and interoperability with the rest of the healthcare system. By 2010, the FDA will go operational with a brand new data center with the goal of replacing paper filings with electronic data capture and storage.

"How do we deal with the amount of data we have to analyze and act upon?” von Eschenbach asked. “The amount of information being generated is expanding at an exponential rate. We’ve got to begin to create opportunities for integrating that information in a way that will lead to knowledge and lead to wisdom that will allow us to prevent disease and promote health.”

Collaboration is key
Von Eschenbach explained that collaboration is key to the future success of the US healthcare system. The FDA wants to be at the center of that collaboration and work with all sectors of the healthcare and life sciences industry.

“We are committed to working with you to identify new opportunities in healthcare and explore new horizons,” von Eschenbach said to the audience. “Collaboration will increase our ability to develop these opportunities and ensure that all data is aligned with the FDA systems.”
 
Overcoming technology obstacles
During a discussion session, a member of the audience asked how healthcare organizations should manage the up-front costs associated with electronic health records, e-prescriptions and health IT in general.

“The future is software as a service,” Halamka said. He went on to propose the use of hosting centers and Web browsers to provide doctors access to electronic health records to reduce the up-front technology costs.

Robert Waller, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and past President and CEO of Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation agreed. “Doctors’ offices should not be IT shops,” said Waller. “Some of us can barely spell analytics!”

The conference also featured an Executive Leadership Panel moderated by Jim Davis, Chief Marketing Officer of SAS Institute, which included Bob Greczyn, President and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina; Christopher Viehbacher, President of US Pharmaceuticals at GlaxoSmithKline; Robert Waller, MD, Chair of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and past President and CEO of Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation; and SAS President and CEO, Jim Goodnight.

Andrew von Eschenbach, MD, Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration