IBM, Oklahoma university to build home healthcare delivery model

The University of Oklahoma (OU) School of Community Medicine and IBM have partnered to build an EMR-enabled primary care practice model that will meet President Obama's vision of an information-based, connected healthcare system. The project includes 355 physicians and connects clinical data from 11 different EMRs between hospitals, physician offices, local ambulances, fire departments and patients.

The new program, which marks IBM's first "medical home" pilot with a medical school, IBM and OU will produce a working model that can be adopted by health systems and primary care practices across the United States to provide patients with the personalized, information-based care needed to improve healthcare delivery.

IBM will bring to the collaboration its secure information-exchange technologies, EMRs enabled with patient-centered medical home processes, and EHR portals for use by patients, physicians, caregivers and health insurers.

In addition, OU and IBM said they will also collaborate to design and implement new health analytics platforms to derive value from the clinical data contained in interconnected EMRs. The health analytics solutions will use IBM's open standards-based technology and will serve as a way to store, analyze and capitalize on OU's clinical, financial, operational, claims, genomic and other medical data.