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Century Health, Nimbus Health curate EHR pulmonary disease datasets
The partnership will draw on EHR data to gain insights into the progression and treatment of COPD and asthma.
Last month tech startup Century Health said it would integrate electronic health records from pulmonary care provider Nimbus Health with its artificial intelligence-powered clinical data platform.
The goal of the partnership is to develop real-world datasets for respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma. Century Health, which keeps updated registries in areas such as neurology, immunology and respiratory diseases, will curate data on tens of thousands of pulmonary patients.
The datasets will allow pulmonary care providers to gain insights into disease progression and treatment outcomes, potentially speeding up development of new therapeutics, the companies said.
Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies can use the data to gain insights on treatment patterns, adherence, exacerbation rates and comparative effectiveness studies. The data will allow pharmaceutical companies to learn about how well interventions help clinical practices.
"By collaborating with Century Health, we can actively contribute to research that drives new therapies and care models, while our clinical teams remain focused on delivering exceptional care to the tens of thousands of pulmonary patients who rely on us," Nimbus Health CEO Clay Spence said.
The research also helps drive progress in respiratory medicine amid a challenging environment for medical research funding, Spence added.
Integrated clinical data platforms and EHRs
Real-world data is crucial to drug discovery and development, and a lack of structured data can impede these efforts. In addition, EHR systems bring heterogeneity, or inconsistencies in data formats.
Century Health specializes in transforming fragmented EHR data into structured, actionable insights. Its clinical data platform integrates with EHR applications from companies that include AdvancedMD, eClinicalWorks, MDLand, NextGen and Nextech. Tools such as direct FHIR API integrations and robotic process automation enable Century Health's platform to support multiple EHR platforms.
"Century Health integrates its platform directly with EHRs, ingesting both structured data and unstructured clinical notes through secure data pipelines that pull in refreshed data every month," explains Vish Srivastava, the company's cofounder and CEO. "The platform applies rigorous de-identification protocols to ensure HIPAA compliance and patient privacy, transforming raw EHR records into de-identified, research-grade datasets."
AI and datasets on respiratory disease
Century Health pulls out information from unstructured clinical data in a format that researchers can use. In addition, automation of data curation and enrichment eliminates manual data entry for healthcare providers.
"Our partnership with Century Health allows Nimbus Health to leverage insights from our extensive clinical data to advance respiratory medicine, particularly for high-burden conditions like COPD and asthma," Spence said. "It would be time and cost prohibitive for our staff to manually extract and organize EHR data to support clinical research."
AI will allow Century Health to mine unstructured physical notes to convert complex clinical details into standardized datasets, Srivastava explained.
"This process creates dynamic, de-identified registries on diseases like COPD and asthma, enabling nuanced analysis of patient outcomes and treatment effectiveness while maintaining data privacy and quality oversight," he said.
In addition, by working with Century Health, Nimbus Health creates a new revenue stream by making routine clinical data an "asset" for life sciences partners, Srivastava noted.
In addition to respiratory disease, Century Health curates EHR data for other types of medical conditions like multiple sclerosis, for which it partners with neurological care provider Nira Medical.
Going forward, detailed real-world datasets on respiratory diseases will enable researchers and clinicians to understand the progression of COPD and asthma and the performance of treatments outside clinical trials, according to Srivastava.
"This accelerates drug discovery, supports more targeted care, and ultimately aims to deliver new, more effective therapies for patients facing serious respiratory conditions," Srivastava said.
Brian T. Horowitz started covering health IT news in 2010 and the tech beat overall in 1996.
