athenahealth unveiled what CEO Jonathan Bush called a “daily news hub” dubbed athenaInsight. Its aim: To report on American healthcare.
The company said it will mine the activity and trends of more than 80,000 healthcare providers and 81 million de-identified patients on the athenahealth network.
It’s something the cloud-based health IT company has done regularly over the years, employing its athenaInsight platform to use EHR data to track flu cases across the country, putting it to work on determining the effects of the Affordable Care Act, and even stepping in for the CDC to monitor disease while government workers were furloughed in 2013.
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As Bush described it, athenaInsight provides an unparalleled view into the habits of high-performing health systems, drivers of effective physician leadership and engagement, and trends tied to public health, such as Zika, opioids and the flu virus.
“Healthcare suffers from a critical lack of cross-continuum information and knowledge sharing,” Bush said in a statement. “With athenaInsight, we’re working to address this by putting our network to work.”
Initially, the hub will focus on the opioid crisis across the country. The vendor is collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control to launch the Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, an interactive, patient-specific tool designed to be used in 90 seconds at the point-of-care.
Since its launch this spring, this has become the most-viewed guideline in Epocrates, athenahealth’s mobile medical reference app.
Also, in partnership with various specialty societies, athenahealth is identifying and alerting patients with opioid-related health risks and their providers across its network using evidence-based clinical guidelines.
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