eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Caradigm is looking to spur new software innovation on its Amalga health care intelligence platform in the cloud under a new name: the Caradigm Intelligence Platform.
On March 4, Caradigm will formally introduce an updated product lineup at HIMSS13, the New Orleans conference organized by the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
GE Healthcare and Microsoft launched Caradigm as a joint venture in June 2012.
Caradigm Intelligence Platform uses near real-time data to help health care organizations increase the quality of care, optimize costs and boost population health.
“We’re excited to bring a new type of solution to market that focuses squarely on the population health challenges facing health care organizations nationwide and beyond,” Michael Simpson, CEO of Caradigm, said in a statement. “The Caradigm Intelligence Platform allows health systems to turn their enormous volumes of data into a strategic asset to drive breakthroughs in the quality, economics and coordination of care.”
Caradigm Intelligence Platform takes clinical, financial and operational data from multiple systems and creates summaries specific to patient populations, so doctors can better improve care outcomes.
The software formerly known as Amalga is meant to complement the data provided by electronic health records (EHRs) rather than replace those applications, according to Mark Johnston, vice president for the Amalga/Caradigm Intelligence Platform business. The addition of intelligence will aid doctors’ workflows by helping them navigate the data and provide context to the information in EHRs.
The introduction of the new Amalga version comes as the health care industry is moving toward a population health model rather than focusing on the health of individual patients, Johnston told eWEEK. Through use of software such as Caradigm Intelligence Platform, doctors will be able to use predictive analytics to spot illnesses such as MRSA staph infections across a population.
Features added to the Caradigm Intelligence Platform from the last version of Amalga include a cloud environment to ease deployment, operation, maintenance and support of the software. It also provides streamlined access to the Continuity of Care Document (CCD), Comma Separated Values, Health Level 7 and XML file formats.
The Intelligence Platform also now includes Cohort Management Designer, which lets doctors identify critical data about targeted populations as well as track infections and readmissions.
Caradigm is looking to encourage software innovation on top of the Intelligence Platform.
“Our real objective in terms of spurring innovation on top of this platform is how … we make it simpler for not only our customer community, [but also for] the ISV community, which we want to continue to recruit to build on top of the platform, to make that development experience a lot easier for them,” said Johnston.
New applications for the Intelligence Platform, include Caradigm Readmissions Management as well as CitiusTech Meaningful Use Quality, a set of business intelligence and reporting tools to help providers comply with federal meaningful-use requirements on care quality and EHR adoption.
The next generation of Amalga also supports GE Performance Solutions Guided Analytics, a program that could reduce unnecessary admissions to emergency departments by improving situational awareness, identifying the root cause of illnesses and helping clinicians with workflow support and performance management. A similar application, GE Performance Solutions AutoBed, helps hospitals predict the number of beds they’ll need as they look to reduce patient wait times.
By offering Caradigm Intelligence Platform in the cloud, companies developing software for the platform can lower their operational costs around database and system support as well as network engineering, said Johnston.
In addition to the apps for the Intelligence Platform, Caradigm also launched Identity and Access Management for Electronic Health Records, which allows single sign-on to Cerner, Epic and GE EHR software. Doctors can tap their badge to access patient data. The application also provides automated user provisioning and de-provisioning of the EHR as well as reporting capabilities for security audits and compliance requirements.
The company also relaunched Microsoft Sentillion Vergence as Caradigm Single Sign-On and Caradigm Context Management. These are applications that provide single sign-on to access patient data across multiple applications.