Source: hitinfrastructure.com
March 19, 2020 – Sentara Healthcare, one of the nation’s oldest not-for-profit health systems, recently announced that it partnered with CitiusTech to implement a next-gen enterprise data platform (EDP).
Using Microsoft Partner Citius’s H-Scale solution, Sentara completed the deployment of the EDP to provide a single, consolidated view of provider, payer, and enterprise information from Sentara and Optima Health Plan, a wholly-owned subsidiary.
“Sentara is committed to delivering high-quality healthcare and innovative services that meet the unique needs of the communities we serve,” Michael Reagin, Sentara Healthcare senior vice president and chief information and innovation officer, said in the announcement.
“We collaborated with CitiusTech to develop an EDP that provides us more flexibility and scale to continue meeting the changing demands of our patients, care teams, and partners across the care continuum.”
The end-to-end data management solution will ingest, curate, transform, and reconcile data from five different sources and create a 360-degree view of the patient record. Sentra ensured that the EDP leverages HIPAA compliant PaaS service offerings of Azure, which can scale large data volume to save nearly $1.5 million annually by moving away from an on-premise model, the announcement stated.
“Next-gen interoperability and real-time data access have become imperative for healthcare organizations to enhance quality of care and align with value-based models,” said Rizwan Koita, CEO of CitiusTech. “Sentra Healthcare with its cloud-first strategy has built an industry-leading data platform using CitiusTech’s H-Scale on Microsoft Azure to support its data-driven performance.”
Sentra is now able to aggregate information and generate insights by implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models, which may save $3 million a year through efficiency improvements across the organization.
“Microsoft Azure enabled CitiusTech to deliver a cloud-based enterprise-wide healthcare data management solution. This enabled Sentara to get a holistic view of patient information across their enterprise,” said Gareth Hall, director of business strategy for Worldwide Healthcare at Microsoft. “CitiusTech H-Scale, combined with Azure, helps customers achieve scale in the healthcare data management.”
Artificial intelligence and blockchain have become increasingly prominent in the healthcare space to improve data storage and interoperability.
Last year, Sentara partnered with Cigna Health to build, share, and deploy solutions using blockchain technology. The collaboration also involved Aetna, Anthem, Health Care ServiceCorporation (HCSC), PNC Bank, and IBM.
“We came together to create the health utility network realizing the need to improve transparency and interoperability in the industry in order to improve healthcare for all Americans,” said Rajeev Ronanki, chief digital officer of Anthem Inc. “Engaging additional members across partner levels and industry perspectives will increase the network’s reach and ability to deliver high-value solutions.”
Experts believe blockchain can transform healthcare by improving data access across networks and implement new patient-centered delivery models.
“By working together and joining health utility networks as a founding member, we have a significant opportunity to create new efficiencies that will lead to improved whole-person health and wellness outcomes for our customers and clients,” Mark Boxer, executive vice president and chief information officer at Cigna concluded.
