Boston-based Partners HealthCare has announced a strategic collaboration with Persistent Systems to develop a new industry-wide open-source platform with the goal of bringing digital transformation to clinical care.
Persistent, a software developer for various industries, based in India, will look enable the digital transformation of clinical care at Partners and, together with Partners, “develop an open-source platform to lower the barriers for knowledge exchange across healthcare providers and enable a new generation of decision support apps in the clinical environment,” according to an announcement from the organizations. This four-year collaboration will bring together clinicians and researchers at Partners HealthCare with Persistent’s healthcare technology and product engineering knowhow.
The co-developed digital platform will be based on SMART (open, standards-based technology platform) along with FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources). “The platform will enable provider systems across the country to rapidly and cost effectively deploy industry-leading best practices in clinical care across their ecosystems,” the press release stated.
“Making innovative clinical tools available to our physicians at Partners and across the country relies on strong collaborations between academia and industry,” said Anne Klibanski, M.D., chief academic officer at Partners HealthCare, an integrated health system founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. “The co-development of this platform should yield a new set of tools that integrates applications directly into the clinical workflow -- ultimately improving patient care.”
Sudhir Kulkarni, president of digital at Persistent Systems, noted in statement that the collaboration serves as “a powerful example of how healthcare visionaries and leaders in technology can create positive disruption. By combining forces with Partners HealthCare to design this platform, we’re bringing continuous transformation to the very essence of the healthcare experience. We’re confident this is just the start.”
