Emory Healthcare Expands nference’s Federated Data Network

Emory Healthcare, the largest academic health system in Georgia, has joined several other large academic medical centers that are partnering with software company nference to advance real-world evidence generation.

Cambridge, Mass.-based nference said its proprietary AI-enabled software platform, nSights, has been used to accelerate life sciences research, development, and clinical care, including biomarker discovery and validation, real-world evidence generation leveraging real-world data, early disease detection, public health policy generation and validation, and more. 

The nSights platform provides a longitudinal, 360-degree view of each patient by leveraging an ensemble of biomedical information, such as electronic health records, electrocardiograms, radiology images and more. Future iterations will also include digital pathology and genomics.

Earlier, Mayo Clinic, Duke Health, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center announced partnerships with nference. The partnership with Mayo Clinic provides nference partners and customers with access to Mayo Clinic Platform’s de-identified electronic health data across a range of disease and therapeutic areas. The collaboration is establishing a Mayo Clinic-branded version of nSights, called Mayo Clinic Platform Discover, built and supported by nference.

Emory Healthcare is comprised of 11 hospitals, the Emory Clinic, and more than 250 provider locations. Its collaboration with nference will support research in several therapeutic areas and expand the nference federated data network with diverse, multimodal (clinical & imaging) data for real-world evidence research and AI model development. The platform, launched in September 2022, allows scientists and clinicians to transform discovery and accelerate development by building highly specific cohorts for large-scale research while preserving patient privacy.

Emory Healthcare will leverage nference’s capabilities to securely de-identify health information and provide the health system with insights about diseases, treatments and outcomes for patients.
 
“At Emory Healthcare, we are committed to research excellence and recognize the significance of real-world evidence for addressing unmet needs in patient populations,” said Joe Depa, chief data and analytics officer at Emory Healthcare and Emory University, in a statement. “This collaboration with nference allows us to join a federated data network of leading institutions that will enable ground-breaking research. Together, we can work to improve lives and provide hope, tackling some of the most critical health care challenges of our time while delivering comprehensive, data-driven insights.”

Depa recently joined Emory from Accenture, where he served as the senior managing director and global lead for data and AI for the company’s strategy and consulting business.

 
“As we continue to advance deep collaborations with the world's best academic medical centers, our multimodal AI platform will enable the discovery of life-saving medicine, advance the development of next-generation interventions, and transform clinical practice through digitization at an unprecedented scale,” said Murali Aravamudan, co-founder and CEO of nference, in a statement.