NEW ORLEANS – Today, Ochsner Health System joined President Obama as a participant in The White House Precision Medicine Initiative Summit in Washington, D.C. The Summit marks the one-year anniversary of the Precision Medicine Initiative which focuses on enabling a new era of clinical care through research, technology and policies that empowers patients, researchers and providers to work together toward development of individualized care.
Ochsner was one of nearly 50 organizations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Harvard Medical School and The Advisory Board Company, selected nationwide based on their ongoing commitment to accelerate precision medicine.
Key principles of the Precision Medicine Initiative include:
• Making it easier for patients to access, understand, and share their own digital health data, including donating it for research
• Engaging participants as partners in research, including returning results to them in dynamic, user-centered ways
• Bring the promise of precision medicine to everyone
• Opening up data and technology tools to invite citizen participation, unleashing new discoveries, and bringing together diverse collaborators to share their unique skills
• Adhering to strong privacy and data security principles
• Advancing and scaling precision medicine approaches in clinical practice.
“Ochsner is committed to advancing the use of patient-generated health data through our work with Apple, Epic, and other organizations,” said Richard Milani, MD, Clinical Transformation Officer, Ochsner Health System, and Chief Medical Officer, innovationOchsner. “We will continue to expand our pilot programs—currently focused on better management of heart failure and hypertension informed by home-based monitoring—to other conditions, enabling our providers to tailor individualized care plans as well as provide patient-specific reports, an important component of any precision medicine effort. Collecting data from patients’ daily lives gives providers a more comprehensive picture of patient health and information to guide prevention recommendations and chronic care management and engages patients as active members of the healthcare team.”
Ochsner reps said as a national leader in healthcare innovation and no stranger to using iOS devices, Epic apps and Apple's HealthKit to better care for patients, Ochsner has a continued commitment to improving outcomes for patients suffering from chronic disease and providing a better patient healthcare experience in both the inpatient and outpatient setting.
Since launching the Digital Medicine Program last year, Ochsner reps said they have been continuously monitoring clinic patients with uncontrolled blood pressure and proactively engaging them to modify behaviors and, when needed, adjust medications. One year later, groundbreaking data confirms this new virtual delivery model is working by delivering significantly better health outcomes, patient satisfaction and patient engagement.
Last year, Ochsner formed innovationOchsner (“iO”), an innovation lab and accelerator whose mission is to re-imagine and revolutionize the experience and delivery of healthcare in a way that creates new value. iO’s work is focused on solving healthcare’s most pressing problems by using technology and data to create precision-focused, patient-centered solutions that dramatically enhance quality and access, decrease cost, and improve patient satisfaction and engagement as well as caregiver efficiency.
Most recently through iO, Ochsner is expanding its innovative programs into the inpatient setting through a new initiative called “Optimal Hospital.” Optimal Hospital uses a new wave of online tools and iOS devices to improve workflow efficiencies in managing patient care, initiating more frequent and dynamic patient interaction.
Ochsner reps said this new inpatient experience will improve the hospital experience for patients and providers alike.
