Practice Fusion Launches De-Identified Database
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
De-identified patient data in one cloud based database will give providers and researchers access to real-time health trends.
Providers can access real-time data related to diseases, pharmaceuticals, and diagnoses through Practice Fusion’s new Insight healthcare database. Offered free of charge, the cloud-based system uses de-identified patient data to show trends and analysis of the latest information.
“Insight by Practice Fusion is a powerful new free tool for healthcare professionals, public health organizations, and research institutions to view current outbreaks, prescription usage, and much more; premium edition offers in-depth pharmaceutical market information and custom reports,” explains Practice Fusion in a press release.
“Real-time patient health data has been kept under lock and key, both because of technology limitations and the companies monetizing that data at a high cost - until today.” said Ryan Howard, founder and CEO, Practice Fusion. “Insight unleashes powerful, de-identified health data from tens of millions of real patients and more than 2,000 drug therapies in real time, at no cost. This is a hugely disruptive move in the health data industry.”
According to Becker’s Hospital Review, the database contains more than 81 million records for physicians to use. The Diagnosis Explorer feature offers providers the opportunity to see disease trends over time and by patient type. Trending Diagnoses shows what diseases doctors are seeing more or less of across the country. Providers can see real time market shares for any drug in the US using the RX Share feature.
“The free version of the Insight database might tell stories like how successfully doctors treated the flu in a given year or vaccination rates among adults. It might reveal information about which patient populations are most at risk for diabetes and other life-threatening illnesses. Pharmaceutical drug companies could also use it to track (in real time) how often doctors prescribe their products,” said Venture Beat.