“Even if I'm very studious and up to date on all of the current literature on hypertension and treatment options, it's unlikely that I've read something that deals specifically with patients like Charlie -looking at his age, his comorbidities, his previous treatment attempts, and other factors that make him unique. “Let's say I'm a physician and I've got a new hypertension patient named Charlie who has just been diagnosed and we're looking at prescribing him a new medication,” he said. The new Best Care tool will offer the capability to see treatments and outcomes for patients similar to the one right in front of the clinician, Thayer explained. Cosmos brings together data from more than 160 million patients representing billions of clinical data points and creates a platform where that de-identified data is available for research. Now Epic is starting to take advantage of its large data sets. “There's a whole set of tools for doing that type of work across all different types of populations,” he said. Using tools in Epic, he said, you're able to automatically identify all of those patients, automate that follow-up, and make sure that patients are getting in for those visits. Previously, identifying those patients would have taken a long time combing through all of your chart. He said health systems are getting more sophisticated in their use of population health tools that can overlay the data to see, for instance, how many diabetic patients are overdue for a foot exam or for a regular screening. Thayer, who has experience as an emergency room nurse, said he is interested in the use of genomics, machine learning, and population health tools to transform care delivery. In a recent wide-ranging interview with Healthcare Innovation, Johnston Thayer, M.B.A., R.N., director of clinical informatics and population health at Epic, described a new tool the company is getting ready to pilot called Best Care, which takes advantage of the EHR vendor’s huge Cosmos research database to provide better decision support at the point of care to clinicians by using real-world data about similar patients.

Epic health system