273312 Integrated Health Analytics Platform (iHAP): Improving public health costs-analytics

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 : 10:50 AM - 11:10 AM

Jay V. Schindler, MPH PhD , Civil Systems Division / Public Health Division, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Atlanta, GA
Background: Public health and healthcare leadership are working with limited resources that are extended over a broader population of recipients. The deluge of health data from disparate sources is overwhelming, and providers need data integration and analytics to help examine populations effectively and identify opportunities for cost-benefits and fraud prevention. Objective/Purpose: Our team is developing an Integrated Health Analytics Platform (iHAP) to provide a suite of data integration, analysis, and visualization tools to identify opportunities for process improvements and cost savings. Users can analyze and visualize target population conditions and risk factors, opportunities for prevention and intervention, and current expenditures and estimates of future costs. Methods: The software tool suite is built on top of a customizable framework for data aggregation and linking, which can easily incorporate best-of-breed technologies for analytics and visualization as well as existing customer capabilities.

Results: We have piloted iHAP capabilities using a public health-centric use case shared and vetted with state and local public health officials. This pilot resulted in high quality visualizations of “big data,” including linked/merged data sets combining financial and transaction level data (e.g., Medicaid Statistical Information System (MSIS) and Health Care Utilization Project National Inpatient Survey (HCUP-NIS)). Such merged data allow cost estimates and comparative effectiveness research (CER) to examine current practices, gain insights on main factors contributing to Medicaid cost expenditures, and estimate future costs based on historical data and a growing understanding of the future population characteristics.

Discussion/Conclusion: We will share details of a joint project between Northrop Grumman and a county public health department using the iHAP tools for a community- and clinic-based patient intervention. We will also demonstrate advanced analytics, including a dynamic profiler that can adjust the number of Medicaid service recipients currently enrolled in different programs to predict annual future total costs for Medicaid state services.

Learning Areas:
Communication and informatics

Learning Objectives:
Explain two benefits public health and healthcare decision-makers derive from using an iHAP framework for integrating, analyzing, and visualizing “big data.” Identify effective methods for visualizing cost-analyses findings for Medicare/Medicaid data. Assess potential benefit of using an iHAP framework for selected public health audiences.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am currently on the development team for the iHAP project, and am supporting data analysis and visualization tools for the analytics platform. My background includes performing biostatistics and public health analytics for large data sets, over 20 years of teaching academic and corporate biostatistics courses, and creating visual information representations for data summaries.
Any relevant financial relationships? Yes

Name of Organization Clinical/Research Area Type of relationship
Northrop Grumman Information Services Employment (includes retainer)

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.