University Hospitals, Premier Division Collaborate on Real-World Evidence

University Hospitals (UH) in Northeast Ohio is collaborating with Premier Inc.’s PINC AI Applied Sciences (PAS) to advance clinical research, real-world evidence generation and explore the development of new solutions, interventions and other novel healthcare initiatives.  

 UH and PAS said they would work together in four distinct areas:  

• Jointly leverage real-world data, clinical input and other research to evaluate novel, new therapies and interventions for commercial development.

 • Conduct prospective research on specific care pathways and other interventions using real-world data and evidence (RWD/RWE).

• Improve the quality and speed of clinical trials, research and product development using artificial intelligence (AI) to help identify diverse trial participants more rapidly.

• Use natural language processing (NLP) to uncover the unstructured information contained within clinician notes, pathology reports and genomics results for early disease identification and intervention.

The research partnership will leverage standardized and connected data, including the PINC AI Healthcare Database which represents more than 1 billion individual inpatient and outpatient encounters from over 1,000 geographically diverse sites. These data assets will help initiate prospective research and clinical trial opportunities that are informed by comprehensive insights and encompass the full patient journey, the organizations said.

UH and PAS plan to focus on a variety of clinical areas including value-based projects related to equity and disparities, quality and value improvement in primary and specialty care, and research around chronic diseases such as oncology, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

“We’re pleased to partner with PAS and tap into RWD to help generate RWE,” said Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., chief clinical transformation officer and chief quality officer at UH, in a statement. “Leveraging our combined data and research expertise will enable reduced research timelines, clinical care pathway development and testing, early disease intervention and help drive innovations in clinical, quality and operational effectiveness.”

“This partnership builds upon our efforts to help test methodologies, implement early detection/identification of patient populations in multiple disease states, and scale solutions in a standardized way,” said Denise Juliano, Life Sciences Group vice president at PAS, in a statement. “Together, University Hospitals and PAS will leverage RWD, research-ready trial sites and representative populations to generate real-world evidence to help develop therapies, create care pathways and introduce new care options. We feel this collaboration will generate better answers to key clinical concerns with greater transparency, equity and operational efficiency.”