A pan-national collaborative analytics platform for the exploration and improvement of population health

Project Information

AtmoHealth

Grant agreement ID: 739096

DOI

10.3030/739096

Project closed

EC signature date 21 September 2016

Start date 1 October 2016

End date 31 March 2018

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 1 798 316,13

EU contribution

€ 1 258 821,29

Coordinated by

IMOSPHERE LTD
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - AtmoHealth (A pan-national collaborative analytics platform for the exploration and improvement of population health)

Reporting period: 2017-07-01 to 2018-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Atmohealth: A democratised analytics platform for the improvement of health and healthcare

The Problem

Whilst most healthcare organisations now use analytics to monitor their activity, analytics is dominated by a delivery model that separates analytics providers from output consumers. There is still huge difficulty aggregating data from multiple sources to achieve a systemwide view. The underlying logic of outputs is not transparent to the end user thus reducing confidence in validity and limiting willingness to take action, whilst further exploration of the data often involves going back to the central team for further outputs. Even where high quality ad hoc query tools are available, they are often limited in capability as they are application- or context-specific or require time and in-depth database skills.

The net effect is difficulty in maximising the value derived from the available data: strategic decisions cannot be made efficiently, frontline practitioners and managers cannot get the information they need when they need it and IT departments are stretched beyond their limit.

The Atmohealth Solution

The Atmohealth project solved these problems in two ways. At the front end such issues are addressed with a more democratised approach whereby end users with different levels of access effortlessly create, share and collaborate in exploring their own data and insights with no previous database or specialist expertise required. At the back end data aggregation from multiple sources was facilitated both by a novel approach to data representation and an automated ETL process. Dependence upon a central team was massively reduced and the value of data could be unlocked more efficiently.

The overall objective of the project was to provide an affordable, user-friendly platform that brings together data from multiple sources in a manner that is easily accessed, ‘mined’ and utilised by all. The resultant platform devolves analytical capability across the healthcare community according to user role, need and capability by:

• simplifying integration of data from multiple sources
• democratising access to large-scale healthcare data
• streamlining data discovery for specialist and non-technical end users
• accelerating improvements in quality, outcomes and efficiency

The outcome of the project was a market-tested and market-ready product strategically positioned to become a leading ‘next generation’ healthcare analytics platform.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Platform development concentrated on:

• Automating import of data collected by other applications
• Immediacy and attractiveness of outputs
• Enhanced features to support multilingual and multi-regional implementations
• Event-based analytics
• Integration with specialist statistical packages

The result is that key areas of the system operate as one highly attractive interactive dashboard where users can select combinations of filters and view their impact on any selected set of insights whilst changes in cohort composition are automatically tracked and visualised and end users notified. Collaboration facilities enable ‘snapshots’ of results and ‘chat’; international use and localisation are fully supported, including a new ‘culture’ feature that allows application of terminology down to individual user level.

At the back end the application incorporates a vastly simplified AutoETL feature that massively accelerates loading of data into the database. New features such as multi-tenancy support cloud-based implementations.

The platform has been externally validated to confirm:

• Accuracy of results
• Auditability of analysis traces
• Security of source data

Commercialisation:

All 4 evaluation sites were sufficiently enthusiastic about the platform to go to contract to continue using it once the project ended. White papers from 3 evaluators were produced and published on the Imosphere website: Karolinska Institutet, University of Limerick and NCMH, Cardiff.

The company has been renamed and rebranded to reinforce an image as a leading edge technology provider ‘Imosphere’ (Imosphere= ‘i’ for Information +’mosphere’ for ‘atmosphere’ i.e. cloud-based information). New company websites went live in Europe and the USA (www.imosphere.co.uk and www.imosphere.com); our digital presence on platforms such as LinkedIn has grown substantially. Demonstration videos are available on YouTube eg https://youtu.be/MrZ0hhyKDVU. Over25 conferences were attended, including 7 in the USA and 3 in Europe alongside dozens of webinars and workshops which resulted in major enhancement of the company’s profile in the marketplace.

A comprehensive product development and commercial strategy has been produced. We have actively engaged with 20+ prospective channel partners in Europe, UK, USA and Middle East leading to commercial agreements, either finalised or in process.

IP protection and freedom to operate was enhanced by the granting of 2 further patents, with several others in process, and registration of several new trademarks.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The enhanced Atmohealth platform resulting from the project has the potential to massively democratise healthcare analytics. It is highly intuitive and visually attractive, enables huge breadth and depth of data exploration; and simplifies and accelerates access to large-scale health data from across the healthcare system.

Society will benefit from enhanced access and accelerated derivation of knowledge and insight, where general benefits include:

• Increased understanding of quality, outcomes and healthcare costs
• Accelerated development of new treatments and systemic interventions
• Improved targeting of resources in public policy, research and commercially
• Advances in evidence-based clinical practice
• Reduced cost of analysis and research; all leading to improved population health

Healthcare providers will benefit from:

• Enhanced ability to leverage domain expertise in improving quality and efficiency of care
• Cost reduction/improved efficiency of service delivery
• Improved quality/standards compliance
• Speedier strategic decision-making, translation of research findings into clinical practice, data exploration and analysis
• Improved clinical outcomes
• Collaborative investigation
• Increased transparency
• Accelerated development of personalised medicine
• Facilitation of evidence-based practice

Health and healthcare researchers will benefit from:

• Enhanced data management across multiple research projects
• Facilitation of engagement in international collaborative research
• Massive increment in speed and ease of cohort identification, data exploration and analysis
• Collaborative analytics
• Enhanced integration of phenotypic and genotypic data
• Speedier arrival at research insights
• Improved publication rates

Commissioning bodies will benefit from: More efficient targeting of commissioning resources; Early identification of population health and care delivery issues; Cost savings and improved outcomes; Real time understanding of trends and effectiveness; Commissioning decisions based on ‘real data’.

Citizens will benefit from: Democratised citizen access to data for individual citizens and user groups representing specific illnesses or conditions; Ability to explore data and present data to support individual and family understanding of health conditions; Enhanced ability to make a substantial direct contribution to the understanding of quality and outcomes of healthcare.

Atmohealth website - Demo page

Imosphere logo

Atmohealth website - Home page