Chicago-based Rush University System for Health (Rush) is working with vendor nference on a clinical analytics platform that will enable Rush researchers to more effectively analyze de-identified, longitudinal and multimodal clinical data. 

Rush is a nonprofit health system that includes Rush University Medical Center, Rush University, Rush Copley Medical Center and Rush Oak Park Hospital, as well as an extensive provider network and numerous outpatient care facilities.

Nference has helped build secure, federated research infrastructure for academic medical centers and integrated delivery networks, including Mayo Clinic, Duke Health, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Emory Healthcare, Banner Health, and Mercy Health.

The new platform will help Rush researchers generate real-world evidence and accelerate clinical research, with the ultimate goal of translating insights into better care and outcomes for patients.

"Our goal is to give our clinicians and scientists better tools to learn from the data generated through patient care and translate those insights into meaningful improvements for the communities we serve," said Matt Walsh, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Rush, in a statement. "This collaboration with nference will help our researchers ask more ambitious questions, generate evidence more efficiently and move discoveries toward clinical practice, while maintaining Rush's stewardship of the data entrusted to us."

Nference will build the platform using its federated software, data harmonization and analytics infrastructure to transform de-identified structured and unstructured clinical information into curated datasets for observational studies and prospective research. The platform is expected to bring together longitudinal information across clinical notes, radiology and pathology imaging, laboratory tests, medications, diagnostic reports, genomics, data associated with biospecimens collected with patient consent, electrophysiology and other modalities. The multimodal data scope will encompass routine care across nearly 5 million unique patients and give researchers a more complete, computable view of de-identified, longitudinal patient journeys.

"Clinical data is extraordinarily rich, but the signals that matter are fragmented across notes, laboratory results, images, genomics and years of patient history," said Venky Soundararajan, Ph.D., co-founder and chief scientific officer of nference, in a statement. "Our federated architecture and agentic AI technologies bring the power of biomedical superintelligence to the health system partner's data environment, transforming multimodal patient journeys into an integrated foundation for scientific discovery."

As the partnership matures, Rush and nference say they expect the platform to enable increasingly advanced multimodal and agentic AI research, continuously transforming de-identified clinical information into new biomedical discoveries, evidence for emerging therapies, next-generation clinical trials, and measurable improvements in patient care.