Yale New Haven Health deploys Computational Health Informatics Platform to advance precision medicine

New Haven, CT (March 6, 2020) – Yale New Haven Health System (YNHHS), in collaboration with investigators from Yale School of Medicine, announced a new investment to create and deploy a Computational Health Informatics Platform to advance precision medicine research and healthcare delivery through the innovative integration of technology and advanced analytics. This platform will provide an integrated data repository and secure computational environment in which the electronic health record (EHR) and other phenotypic data will be combined with genotypic data to develop new therapies and diagnostic tools to drive improved healthcare outcomes.

This expanded platform is vital to leveraging the possibilities of the digital transformation in medicine. The new investment will extend support and availability of the platform for Computational Health and Precision Medicine initiatives throughout the School and Health System, including the recently announced Generations project. “Our recent investments in genomic health will be amplified by our ability to return these complex results to providers at the bedside,” said Dr. Keith Churchwell, EVP & COO, Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH) and co-sponsor of CHIP. “This platform will allow us to make these data clinically useful and leverage the data to create and deliver precision therapies to our patients.”

Built on a modern data architecture, the current platform acquires over 20 billion data points, including real-time EHR and physiologic monitoring data. “The ability to capture data in real-time and be able to deploy new analytic approaches outside the EHR, while still integrating results at the point of care, offers incredible potential to accelerate innovation and clinical artificial intelligence” said Wade Schulz, MD, director of the CORE Center for Computational Health at YNHH and assistant professor of Laboratory Medicine at Yale School of Medicine, who is co-leading the development of CHIP and architect of the original data lake environment. Charlie Torre, Jr, Chief Data and Analytics Officer of YNHHS, who is the other project co-lead, stated “with this new platform, investigators and analysts will be able to securely access and analyze data from across the enterprise, from cost accounting to clinical outcomes. This will allow us to deliver agile analytics to increase clinical and operational efficiency across the health system.”

This initiative has required close collaboration between YSM and YNHH faculty, ITS professionals and administration. “Our goal in healthcare information technology is to provide the right information to the people who can make the right decisions for and with patients” said Lisa Stump, SVP & CIO, YNHH/YSM, and co-sponsor of CHIP. “With CHIP, we will be able to deliver precision data at the point-of-care and also provide our research departments with the information needed for the next generation of research, which is centered on data and data science.” The implementation of CHIP will create an expanded analytic ecosystem to improve access to data in a secure environment, ensuring high-quality data is available for clinical, research, and operational use with appropriate oversight and centralized governance.