The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Innovations’ Facebook page is congregating interesting examples of organizations leveraging health data to create new ideas or applications. Because we are alway on the watch for great new uses of health data, we’ll be using this blog to take a look at a few health apps that have been submitted.
If you or your organization is involved with a creative new health app, share it on their page – or better yet, present or exhibit it at Health Datapalooza IV. If you’re curious about how others are using and creating health data apps, check out the HHS Facebook storybook page. Reposted below is Steven Randazzo’s thoughts on IndiGO a clinical decision support tool.
Archimedes IndiGO Helps Patients Make Data Driven Health Decisions
IndiGO, a clinical decision support tool developed by Archimedes, Inc., is an innovative new application that relies on open government data, personal health data, and an individual’s choice to provide an overall health status. Unlike other health applications that just tell a patient what to do or not do, IndiGO gives patients a number of choices with different point values. From that list, patients, with the assistance of their physicians, make decisions which then determine the overall impact on their health. For example, if there is a patient who is a chronic smoker and has Type II diabetes, IndiGO will provide a point value displaying a number of options the patient has to improve his/her health; options such as exercising, eating healthier, taking a specific medication and quit smoking. While quitting smoking may have the highest value, this option may be unrealistic for the patient. So IndiGO provides a value for the other options and gives the patient a clear picture of their health based on the choices he/she makes, resulting in a patient improving their health, for example, by 30 points instead of 50. IndiGO creates a personalized estimate for each individual, allowing patients to take ownership in the health care decisions they make, while the improvement of their health affects the likelihood of being at risk for more severe health conditions, such as onset diabetes, heart attack or stroke.
IndiGO is unique in that it combines a patient’s health information (stripped of personal identifiers) with a robust set of open government health data. In fact, studies from the National Institutes of Health, such as the Framingham Heart Study, the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis Study, and the Cardiovascular Health Study were an important part of developing risk formulas that help determine benefits assessed each patient. Population level health data combined with IndiGO’s awesome algorithms gives patients and physicians a new way to manage individual health care. At this point you may be asking yourself, so if IndiGO is so awesome, why haven’t I seen it?
Well you might have already. Archimedes tested IndiGO in a clinical setting of 12,500 patients at Kaiser Permanente Hawaii and the results were astounding. They found that:
- A 13% reduction in five-year cardiovascular disease risk from use of IndiGO (compared to the existing EHR and decision support tools).
- A six-fold increase in fill rate of new statin prescriptions among patients who were shown IndiGO (compared to patients whose doctor used a standard care gap tool).
Want to have your own experience with IndiGO? Currently, Archimedes IndiGO has adapted to an API for use by consumers. The API is meant to help those participating in the ONC and Million Hearts Challenge. Sparked by data, IndiGO’s innovative approach is changing the way individuals and physicians make decisions on health.