Technology will enable UW to quickly aggregate data from its disparate EMR systems to improve and accelerate medical research and discovery.
SEATTLE and REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The
University of Washington (UW) will use Microsoft Amalga, the unified
intelligence system, in a research protocol designed to provide clinical and
translational researchers with faster and more complete access than they
previously had to electronic data stored on disparate systems within the
university. UW's Institute of Translational Health Sciences (ITHS),
http://www.iths.org, intends to use Microsoft Amalga to accelerate and improve
translational research, which takes medical discoveries from the laboratory
into the clinic and out into the community.
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Microsoft Amalga addresses a common and critical challenge of healthcare
providers by integrating vast amounts of clinical, administrative and
financial information that flows in and out of disparate information systems,
and tailoring that information for use by researchers, physicians, analysts,
laboratory technicians, nurses and administrators. Microsoft Amalga takes
advantage of health enterprises' investments in existing health IT solutions
and makes it possible for the entire organization to gain quick access to data
and turn that information into critical knowledge that facilitates better
decision-making and improved patient outcomes.
In the UW's complex academic systems, gaining access to aggregate views of
data is time- and labor-intensive and hinders translational research with long
lags between the time a researcher has a need for a particular data set and
when access to the data set is provided.
Microsoft Amalga is designed to provide ITHS researchers with the ability
to comprehensively access, search and perform analysis on data stored in UW
medical record systems, UW research laboratory systems and study data
management systems. For example, subject to institutional review board and
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations,
researchers will be able to quickly assess whether the UW patient population
has the numbers to support a study testing a particular hypothesis or if there
are new patients eligible for recruitment into a trial.
