THE HEALTHCARE OUTCOMES ANALYZER

 

             

Introduction:  Recent developments at the University of Texas Health Science Center’s Harris County Psychiatric Center have great promise in area of hospital management.  Working together, several employees developed a healthcare outcomes analyzer that shows significant advantages over current systems in allowing those in the hospital setting to analyze data and forecast trends.

Current Problems:  The purpose of the Healthcare Outcomes Analyzer is elegantly simple, it compiles data which allows managers to examine various indicators (such as clinical and budgetary indicators) in order to identify certain trends and forecasts.  In the hospital setting, this is critical in order to determine budget issues and determine patient forecasts, etc.  At this time, similar products on the market have several shortcomings.  First, they are limited in the number of indicators they are able to analyze.  Put another way, too little data is input, so too little data is generated.  Second, they lack timeliness.  Data is not generated in real time, so those in the hospital setting are forced to use older data to determine the solution to real time problems.  Finally, they are efficient at giving broad information about the hospital setting, but fall short as they attempt to predict trends at even the departmental level.  The best solution to these problems should provide timely and detailed information.

The Technology:  The Healthcare Outcomes Analyzer has several advantages over the other commercially available systems.  First, it has a much broader range of data, some 21 clinical outcomes, which provide 60 charts and over 140 clinical and budget reports.  This more detailed information means that reports can be run on more than the budget for supply “X” in the hospital, they can be run for supply “X” in a given department or even for a given employee.  Additionally, this ability to “drill down” means that, on the clinical side, indicators can be used to highlight an individual patient’s patterns over time, giving caregivers additional data to make decisions earlier in response to this data.  Also, the Healthcare Outcomes Analyzer gives more real-time data, allowing caregivers to have the up to the minute data which is needed to make important decisions.  Given the ever increasing complexity of the data generated in the hospital environment, and the ever increasing need for speed and accuracy in this data, hospitals that are able to get the most out of this data will have a distinct advantage over those that do not. The Healthcare Outcomes Analyzer is a significant step in the direction of greater efficiency in the hospital setting.

 

NON-CONFIDENTIAL TECHNOLOGY DESCRIPTION

The preceding is intended to be a non-confidential summary of a novel technology created at the University of Texas Health Science center at Houston (UTHSCH), for which the University has obtained patent protection.

Creators: Guadalupe Martinez, Arslee Mackey, Susan Grice, Rachel McBride, and Patricia Averill

License Available: world-wide; exclusive or non-exclusive

 

To obtain further information about this technology, please contact:
Office of Technology Management, 7000 Fannin, Suite 720, Houston, TX 77030
Phone: (713) 500-3369  Fax: (713) 500-0331
Email: uthsch-otm@uth.tmc.edu