SAS, the Cary, N.C.-based business analytics software and services company, and Barrington, Ill.-based GE Healthcare have entered into a joint development and marketing agreement by which GE Healthcare will leverage SAS technology to analyze and deliver relevant, detailed patient safety information to help hospitals address preventable adverse medical events. Applying robust SAS Analytics will enable GE’s Patient Safety Organization (PSO) to mine the data and provide critical insights, best practices and benchmarking that inform change at health care institutions.
GE’s PSO collects, analyzes and aggregates patient safety adverse events and near misses to identify root causes of risk. By applying industry-leading data warehousing and business intelligence technologies from SAS, the PSO member hospitals will receive information about their data to help identify the root causes of risk, enabling members to make lasting safety improvements. When adverse event data is de-identified, the GE PSO can share critical information, such as trends or risk areas, without compromising privacy standards.
PSO members will collect and report adverse event data through a single, common Web-based Medical Event Reporting system (MERS). MERS enables members to not only capture more event reports and near misses, but to also capture more data in each report on a common platform. The PSO attempts to identify factors contributing to increased risk by looking across large numbers of hospitals. It will share findings among members, who can apply that knowledge before errors occur.
