EHRs integrated with clinical research

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., and LONDON, Ont. – InterSystems, a global leader in healthcare information technology, has partnered with Pulse Infoframe, a leader in collaborative research and patient registry solutions, to facilitate clinical research and population health studies.

Leveraging the InterSystems HealthShare health informatics platform for interoperability between clinical research systems and electronic health records (EHRs), physicians and researchers can easily capture, organize, model, store and share clinical research data through a secure, web-based application.

“We congratulate InterSystems and Pulse Infoframe for collaborating on innovative healthcare solutions. Pulse Infoframe is one of Canada’s emerging technology leaders, and InterSystems is globally respected for healthcare technology serving millions of people. We enthusiastically support this partnership,” said David Alward, Consul General with the Consulate General of Canada, Boston.

Healthie, the Pulse platform, is a clinical business intelligence solution that connects specialists from around the world in self-configuring networks. Created by physicians and for physicians, the cloud-based solution accepts and aggregates data from both mobile and stationary devices.

The InterSystems HealthShare platform will ensure interoperability across a wide variety of health information systems and multiple geographies, enabling integration between the curated data collected in de-identified patient records and data from the research community, with real-time analytics.

For example, Pulse Infoframe created the first North American melanoma registry, now deployed in 12 leading cancer centres and growing. Dr. Scott Ernst, Division Head, Medical Oncology, at the London Health Sciences Centre, said, “We realized that even though we introduced new melanoma treatments, we were not always sure how we were impacting patient outcomes. Using Healthie, we can now track patients not just at our centre, but all over the country, to answer that most basic of questions, ‘How are patients doing?’”

“Our goal is to transform the clinician from a siloed specialist to a member of a vibrant community of thought leaders empowered with relevant data and advanced patient care. We call the data we capture ‘little data,’ in that it is just the right data that is relevant and actionable,” said Dr. Femida Gwadry-Sridhar (pictured), CEO and founder of Pulse Infoframe.

In another example, Pulse is working with a major U.S. metropolitan teaching hospital on a digital health program to develop online, mobile and software solutions to healthcare problems.

Dr. Robert L. Goodman, while serving as professor of radiation oncology at Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, worked with Pulse on this program to improve population health outcomes for over 100,000 labor union members in Philadelphia.

As a no-cost benefit, union members received a phone app that would identify potential risk for cardiovascular disease. The de-identified data could be accessed for population health studies by clinicians, and the union members who were identified as high risk could contact a physician for follow-up. “The participants can opt-in to get additional support and information if desired. Cardiologists can use the Pulse platform to push and pull data, combining public outreach with population health studies. The result is a healthier overall population,” Dr. Goodman noted.

“These ‘outside-in’ applications of our technology are very important,” Dr. Gwadry-Sridhar noted. “The data is based on a real-life population in which not everyone is sick, where the technology creates an opportunity for both cardio health education and ultimately wellness interventions.”

“We are proud to work with Pulse Infoframe. The Pulse platform could really be a real game changer in medicine, not only to facilitate collaborative research among clinicians and researchers, but to educate patients and maintain productive communications with them after treatment,” said Joe DeSantis, vice president of HealthShare Platforms.

Today the Pulse platform is used by leading healthcare organizations worldwide to measure, value and improve patient outcomes for 24 diseases, including cancer, diabetes and heart disease. The solutions are replicable, quickly deployable and globally scalable.

About Pulse Infoframe

Founded in 2011, Pulse Infoframe is a private company based in London, Ontario, that develops connected clinical intelligence solutions. Its cloud-based analytics platform allows physicians in an outpatient or specialty clinic to easily capture, organize, model, store and share detailed administrative and medical data with patients and other healthcare stakeholders through a secure, web-based application. In 2013 Pulse Infoframe was selected out of over 70 applicants to receive a spot at the Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) at the University Science Center in Philadelphia, a place for promising, early-stage companies in the health-information technology sector. More information is available at www.pulseinfoframe.com.

About InterSystems

InterSystems provides the information engines that power some of the world’s most important applications. In healthcare, finance, government, and other sectors where lives and livelihoods are at stake, InterSystems has been a strategic technology provider since 1978. InterSystems is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), with offices worldwide, and its software products are used daily by millions of people in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit InterSystems.com.