The climate of the health care industry is shifting, and things are heating up in terms of population health. Providers must be ready to meet new and stricter quality standards not just for better care for the individual but also for the greater health of the entire human population. This involves embracing advancements in technology that can help providers evaluate large amounts of information to recognize health and health care deficiencies in specific population groups, such as electronic health records and enterprise image management. Many technologies for population health management are still in their early stages, but researchers at some of the country's top institutions are hard at work making developments and progress in this aspect of health IT - namely, Johns Hopkins University.

As a highly respected research center, Johns Hopkins University has launched its own population health IT center aimed at meeting the growing demand for technology that supports value-based payment models. The main focus of the center, which is housed in the university's Bloomberg School of Public Health, is to integrate electronic health records, mobile health and other health IT tools into patient care to improve care among targeted populations. Brilliant minds from different departments, including medicine, nursing, engineering and applied physics, have come together to apply their expertise in an effort to build usable and efficient population health IT tools for the better of human health overall.

Predictive modeling for real-time decision support
The scientists are working closely with four large health care systems that have all utilized EHR systems for more than 10 years. Through these facilities, the center is using predictive modeling analytics to create real-time decision support that will detect high-risk cases and help providers better recognize populations that tend to suffer from a specific chronic condition. The health IT tools uses EHR elements including laboratory result values, cardiovascular data, DICOM images, vital signs, risk assessments and other patient information.

Other research projects
But this is just one of the center's research initiatives. Another involves working with Maryland's health information exchange to use predictive modeling to anticipate which patients and groups are at high risk of readmission. Additionally, a collection of the university's engineers are applying their firm grasp of natural language processing to mine clinical notes. The information they dig up can help the public health agencies and obstetrics department across the country more efficiently identify high-risk mothers early on in their pregnancies.

Through its interdisciplinary approach to research, Johns Hopkins' population health center is developing viable health IT tools to improve health care not just for each patient but for entire groups of people and, in a larger scope, all of humanity. The future of health care information technology depends on work by researchers such as these, but the center also emphasizes its need to implement better ways of managing big data - capturing, sorting and sharing patient information.

News brought to you by TeraMedica, Inc., leaders in healthcare enterprise imaging (VNA) solutions.