Verily, 3M Ink Pact To Develop Population Health Technology
By Jof Enriquez,
Follow me on Twitter @jofenriq
Verily Life Sciences (formerly Google Life Sciences) and 3M Health Information Systems are collaborating to develop population health technology focusing on clinical and financial tools to help hospitals and providers reduce costs and improve the quality of care. The two companies plan to build a joint platform that will measure rates of complications, readmissions, and mortality, lengths of stay, and line costs.
For the partnership, Verily will contribute deep domain expertise in data analytics and the development of software tools and algorithms to help make this health data useful and actionable. 3M will provide capabilities in health data coding and classification and risk stratification methodologies used by federal and state health agencies and hospital groups, according to a news release.
“We have the data analytics and software to understand trends and make predictions across large quantities of data, and we see a clear opportunity to apply this approach to health data for insights that can impact care,” said Tom Stanis, head of software and analytics at Verily. “Together, with 3M’s know-how and deep expertise in parsing and coding clinical data, we imagine a world where providers have precise information to guide focused improvement, and can consistently access objective, actionable feedback to make informed decisions.”
JaeLynn Williams, VP and GM, 3M Health Information Systems, added, “This collaboration reflects our commitment to continued innovation in health information systems that address real-world problems facing health care today, while protecting the privacy and security of health data.”
Announcement of 3M and Verily’s pact comes shortly after Siemens Healthineers and IBM Watson Health unveiled their own partnership to offer tools on population health, an emerging area rife with opportunities in the era of value-based care.
The Affordable Care Act is one of several forces pushing a transition from the traditional “fee-for-service” payment scheme to a “fee-for-value” model, in which healthcare providers work within budgets to meets care quality measures and reimbursement targets, noted the Star Tribune.
Other factors advancing the momentum for population health management include an aging population, the rise in the incidence of chronic conditions, and shift to home-centric care.
MarketsandMarkets valued the U.S. population health management market valued at $8.5 billion, or 77 percent of the global market, in 2015, according to Healthcare Dive. Growing 23.2 percent annually, the global market for PHM is expected to reach $31.6 million by 2020.