Personalized medicine focuses on better customizing your care based on your individual health history and your DNA whenever possible. But receiving tailored care may not be all about you—and that can be a good thing. Thousands of patients who share similar characteristics with you such as age, weight, blood pressure and/or health conditions like diabetes may have as much or more to say about whether you need specific screening tests or how you will fare after hip replacement surgery.
In fact, it really may take your NorthShore “village” or community to keep you in the best health. At NorthShore, our experts in clinical analytics harness the power of the clinical data that flows daily from our renowned, secure electronic medical record (EMR) system into our Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW).
Our team of experts develops predictive modeling programs based on the health records and outcomes of the many individuals who receive care throughout our physician’s offices, clinics and hospitals. If you have a similar health profile as a majority of patients who’ve already had the same diagnosis, therapy or procedure, the likelihood is strong that you could have the same experience. By building clinical decision-making tools right into the EMR, NorthShore can provide real-time guidance to your physician from the moment he or she opens your electronic chart.
Already through clinical analytics, we have:
- Reduced pre-hospital admission MRSA screening of every person to just those individuals most likely to carry this highly infectious disease. In maintaining our low rate of MRSA infection, we have avoided the high rate of false-positive results often associated with this standard test and cut down on unnecessary isolation of non-infected patients.
- Determined normal post-surgical body temperatures for a range of common surgical procedures based on individual health characteristics. Previously unknown or standardized, this information ensures that your physician has a better idea of what your temperature should be after any given procedure and tailors your care accordingly.
- Flagged patients for patterns of high blood pressure readings that could lead to potentially undiagnosed hypertension. By analyzing the bigger picture of your clinical care at NorthShore—whether you visit one physician or many—we’ve developed an analytical tool for enhanced detection of this serious health condition.
Both secured systems—the EMR and Enterprise Data Warehouse—provide a wealth of important information to improve the quality of clinical services we provide at NorthShore. Based on the health histories of many, clinical analytics ultimately works to improve and personalize the care of the individual: namely, you.