By Paul Nicolaus
February 2, 2016 | HealthMyne, a three-year-old Madison, Wis., based startup has teamed up with Epic Systems and UW Health to integrate its informatics platform with electronic health record (EHR) data – a move intended to help radiologists better monitor cancer treatment progress.
“A lot of the initial founders and people in the organization have relationships with the UW and it is a top 50 designated cancer center, so it’s a perfect partner for us to collaborate with in that sense,” said Del Coufal, HealthMyne’s VP of marketing & business development.
In addition, UW Health uses Epic, and 40 of the top 50 U.S. cancer centers – HealthMyne’s initial target market – either have it already or are moving toward Epic as their EHR vendor of choice. The fact that they are based out of nearby Verona, Wis. is a convenient bonus.
Viewing Images as Data
HealthMyne is attempting to tackle one of the key challenges radiologists face. Each patient seen typically has multiple studies, and each study has multiple medical images such as X-rays and CT scans. “That’s a lot of images that they’re reviewing on a daily basis,” Coufal said.
And the process of reviewing those images isn’t all that efficient. Currently, clinicians work within their picture archiving and communication system (PACS), he explained, then pull up the EHR data on another system and attempt to integrate that information in their mind. HealthMyne, on the other hand, allows radiologists to view imaging data along with relevant patient health record data.
The integrated and interactive, one-screen encapsulation of all the images that have been taken provides a sequential, longitudinal timeline layout that is interspersed with data from the EHR. Because the software automatically quantifies data, it encourages clinicians to view images in a whole new light. “Radiologists have typically viewed these images more as pictures,” Coufal noted, “and what we’re trying to do is enable them to look at this as data.”
A more unified view of imaging and EHR information means radiologists will be able to take advantage of an evidence-based population health model and treat individual patients with insights gleaned from similar patient cohorts. There are a fair amount of companies focused on data analytics, he added, but many of those are approaching it more from the data that exists in an EHR whereas HealthMyne is honing in on the data mining of clinical images – an area that requires a different level of expertise.
Mining for Gold
At the recent J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference held in January, Andy Slavitt, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), predicted the end of the meaningful use program and an increased focus on interoperable technology.
“That certainly favors an organization like HealthMyne,” Coufal said, “but I think even bigger than that kind of statement is this overall movement in U.S. healthcare where we’re evolving from a fee-for-service to a system that is based on quality and outcomes.” A movement toward healthier patients and more cost-effective care positions HealthMyne nicely, he asserts, considering the way the product attempts to give radiologists and oncologists quicker access to the information needed to make well-informed treatment decisions.
And with a recent 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and designation as the “Most Promising Company” at the recent Personalized Medicine World Conference, the company is ready to move forward. The approval, which was announced by HealthMyne on January 19, 2016, allows the company to take a step beyond a base image management system and utilize its analytics capabilities. “That basically opens the doors to widespread commercialization,” said Coufal.
The prospect of getting additional data into the hands of clinicians and enabling them to find imaging bio-markers presents an exciting opportunity, pointed out Roger Chylla, CTO and one of the HealthMyne founders. “If we can give them enough of this data they can find those signatures which will be much more prescriptive and much more diagnostic than just the simple notions we have today of things like the length or size or change in length or size of the tumor,” he said.
“There’s the eternal analogy of mining for gold, right? To mine for gold, we’re providing the pan, really, for the miners to make that mining process efficient so that these researchers can find the gold and we can distribute those signatures back into normal quality of care,” Chylla added. “That’s what I find exciting.”