Simply after closing a $28 billion deal to amass digital well being information firm Cerner, tech big Oracle mentioned it thinks it might remedy one of many largest tech issues in healthcare: affected person information.
The mixed corporations will create a nationwide well being information database that pulls in information from hundreds of hospitals, mentioned Larry Ellison, Oracle board chairman and chief know-how officer, throughout a press briefing. Affected person information can be nameless till people give consent to share their data. “We’re constructing a system the place all Americans’ well being information not solely exist on the hospital stage, however in addition they are in a unified nationwide well being information database,” Ellison mentioned.
Ellison outlined the well-trodden issues with the US’s healthcare information techniques: affected person data is siloed off inside particular person establishments. That makes it arduous for docs to get details about their sufferers after they’re handled at different establishments. It additionally makes it tough for analysis groups to do research on massive teams of individuals; they’re typically restricted to the affected person data on the place the place they work, so it’s arduous for them to inform if their conclusions would apply to individuals at different well being facilities.
However, regardless of Ellison’s sweeping guarantees, Oracle will seemingly face an uphill battle to make the imaginative and prescient a actuality. Well being IT experts tweeted skepticism within the wake of the announcement. Consultants in well being know-how and the federal authorities have spent years, if not a long time, making an attempt to make it simpler for well being information held at totally different establishments to speak with one another. A Nationwide Institutes of Well being program was capable of construct an nameless, centralized information database for COVID-19 analysis in 2020, however that took monumental effort from individuals who already labored on interoperability points — and it was nameless and didn’t require navigating affected person consent.
Large tech corporations typically run into issues after they attempt to deal with the advanced, knotty American healthcare system. Cerner and Oracle’s partnership combines tech experience with expertise within the well being information ecosystem, which can provide them a leg up. However, as with most points in healthcare, there’s a chasm between figuring out the issue and with the ability to repair it.
