ConvergeHEALTH by Deloitte and Regenstrief Institute Announce Collaboration to Accelerate the Use of Real World Evidence in Health Care

Regenstrief Institute joins ConvergeHEALTH's consortium to support a rapid-learning network

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Jun 17, 2014, 10:04 ET

NEW YORK and INDIANAPOLIS, June 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- ConvergeHEALTH by Deloitte and the Regenstrief Institute, Inc. are announcing that Regenstrief, an internationally recognized informatics and health care research organization, has become a member of ConvergeHEALTH's real-world evidence and analytics consortium.

Regenstrief joins Intermountain Healthcare and Moffitt Cancer Center/M2Gen as part of a rapid-learning network established by ConvergeHEALTH to support the health industry's shift toward a value-based system featuring personalized medicines. Among the potential benefits, the collaboration will help life-sciences manufacturers and academic institutions more effectively identify evidence opportunities by reducing the time required to conduct retrospective analyses and prospective research related to comparative effectiveness and drug safety. Regenstrief brings more than 40 years of detailed clinical data that ConvergeHEALTH's visualization tools can query with a few clicks of a mouse. Other studies can be streamlined by better identifying underserved populations, predicting effectiveness and pinpointing the right patients for deeper studies.

"Our center for biomedical informatics has one of the largest and most diverse sets of longitudinal patient data today," said William M. Tierney, M.D. president and chief executive officer of Regenstrief Institute and associate dean for clinical effectiveness research at the Indiana University School of Medicine. "For centuries, health care providers have learned from casual observations of their patients. We are pleased to team with Deloitte to advance our goal of creating a rapid-learning environment for rigorous research. ConvergeHEALTH's OutcomesMiner platform, combined with our unique longitudinal data and research capabilities, will help life-sciences manufacturers and other private, public and academic collaborators accelerate studies and ultimately create more efficient therapies."

Leveraging electronic medical records and other health data, OutcomesMiner helps users explore real-world outcomes for sub-populations of interest. The ConvergeHEALTH rapid-learning network also enables collaborators to conduct follow-on retrospective and prospective studies with its consortium members to develop further evidence to support comparative effectiveness research, product planning, health economic and outcomes research and observational insights that support safety analytics and commercial decision-making.

"As health care transforms, we see collaborations with organizations like Regenstrief as a model for the learning systems that rely upon real world evidence -- this can increase data-driven discoveries and enhance our understanding of what works and for whom," said Asif Dhar, M.D., principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and executive vice president of solutions for ConvergeHEALTH by Deloitte. "We are excited to have the Regenstrief Institute join our consortium with Intermountain and M2Gen. These institutions have incredible assets that have already changed medical research. Adding Regenstrief to our analytic powerhouse will accelerate the transformation from a volume- to a value-based U.S. health system."

In addition to the benefits for life-sciences companies, the Regenstrief collaboration will help health care providers determine better treatments based on clinical data and associated patient outcomes in targeted sub-populations. This is becoming increasingly important as reimbursement models shift toward value and population health.

"Regenstrief is a global leader in leveraging health care information and informatics to understand health outcomes," said Brett J. Davis, principal Deloitte Consulting LLP, and general manager of ConvergeHEALTH by Deloitte. "We look forward to collaborating with Regenstrief as part of ConvergeHEALTH's rapid-learning network to support insights into optimal care in a real-world setting as the industry moves to a personalized paradigm."

Regenstrief Institute project director Michael D. Murray, PharmD, MPH, described the ability to better analyze and visualize big health care data using the portfolio of tools offered by ConvergeHEALTH as "a great way to accelerate the institute's efforts in comparative effectiveness and medication safety research." Dr. Murray is a Regenstrief investigator and distinguished professor and endowed chair of medication safety at Purdue University.

The Institute's Center for Biomedical Informatics developed one of the nation's first electronic medical record systems, one of the country's first computerized provider order entry systems and the country's first and most comprehensive health information exchange, making Indiana one of the most health wired states in the country and a model for health data exchange. In April 2006, Rand Corp. identified Regenstrief Institute medical informatics as an internationally recognized health care information pioneer, one of four benchmark institutions that produced nearly 25 percent of all published, high-quality research on the impact of information technology on the quality of health.

Findings from the Institute have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicineand the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, among other top-tier peer-reviewed publications.

About the Regenstrief Institute
The Regenstrief Institute is the home of internationally recognized centers of excellence in biomedical and public health informatics, aging research, health services and health systems research and health care effectiveness research. Institute investigators and affiliated scientists form a talented cadre of researchers linked to one of the most comprehensive medical informatics laboratories in the United States possessing one of the largest collections of rich clinical data in the country.

Established by philanthropist Sam Regenstrief on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus in 1969, the institute is a 501(c)(3) organization closely associated with the Indiana University School of Medicine. For more information, visit https://www.regenstrief.org

About ConvergeHEALTH by Deloitte
ConvergeHEALTH brings powerful, demonstrated analytics platforms and data models from Recombinant by Deloitte, advanced proprietary and open source analytics, content and benchmarks through collaboration with industry leaders and deep experiences from Deloitte's life sciences and health care consulting practice to help our clients survive and thrive in the new paradigm of value-based, personalized medicine. For more information, visit www.converge-health.com.

As used in this document, "Deloitte" means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.

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