Let’s catch up
We just hosted a LinkedIn Live, “Monitoring Medical Device Outcomes & Health Disparities,” with three Truveta leaders — our CEO, Terry Myerson; Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Ryan Ahern, MD, MPH; and VP of Communications, Lish Mark. They discussed how Truveta got started, our recent collaboration with Boston Scientific, and how we’re uncovering insights around health equity. Here’s a quick recap of what we covered.
How’d Truveta get started?
During the early months of the pandemic, in the midst of debates about how to care for COVID patients, we noticed the lack of technical and regulatory ability to find life-saving answers.
“A group of us said, ‘Let’s build a company to help save lives with data.’” – Terry Myerson
Four forward-thinking health systems discussed the possibility of defragmenting healthcare data, and founded Truveta in September 2020. Two years later, there are now 24 innovative health systems that share and are committed to this vision of saving lives with data.
What’s exciting about the collaboration with Boston Scientific?
Truveta will enable Boston Scientific to gather insights on a breadth of devices and disease states, including peripheral artery disease, venous thromboembolic disease, and segments of interventional oncology, by leveraging Truveta’s de-identified medical records for millions of patients across the US.
Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a highly prevalent disease and Truveta Research studied treatment and outcomes. “It is widely known this disease disproportionately impacts minority populations, but there is limited clinical data to better characterize those disparities.” – Dr. Ryan Ahern
We’re looking forward to working with such an innovative company that builds medical devices that impact the lives of our friends and families every day, to help them study and understand the outcomes of their products. Medical device manufacturers like Boston Scientific will use Truveta’s data to understand the comparative effectiveness of their devices, improving patient care.
“As an investigator, you’re trying to find the best possible data source to answer your clinical and research questions.” – Ryan Ahern
What are the unique challenges for medical device companies that Truveta can address?
There are three core problems facing medical device companies when it comes to studying the comparative effectiveness of their products that Truveta is solving:
1. Protecting patient privacy
This is handled in multiple layers, with multiple audits, to make data accessible in a de-identified form for hypothesis generation.
“You want to put that data at people’s fingerprints, so they can ask and answer questions quickly. You need to make the data accessible and respect all the privacy regulations and practices along the way.” – Terry Myerson
2. Fragmented data
The data is spread across multiple providers, so it’s important to get a complete longitudinal view of these patients.
“You need a collective of people…who think about the greater good.” – Terry Myerson
3. Unstructured data
“If you’re an innovator at a medical device company and you want to understand, how to improve your product, ensure your products are used in the best way, you want to know which version of your product was used with a particular patient, in a particular situation, with these particular outcomes.” – Terry Myerson
Terry Myerson, Dr. Ryan Ahern, and Lish Mark, alongside many of Truveta’s team members.
Great, what’s next?
I think we’re really pushing the boundaries of AI to…create these analytic tools that these investigators can use.” – Terry Myerson
There’s much more work to be done and much more to learn to study and address diseases like PAD. This work is another huge step in our vision of saving lives with data. For more information about our work and our recent collaboration, watch the full LinkedIn Live, our Boston Scientific announcement video, and delve into our research insights on the treatments and outcomes of peripheral artery disease. We’re excited about working with our collaborators, newest health system members, and mission-driven clinical researchers, as we continue to learn more and use unprecedented data to advance care.
About Truveta
Truveta is a collective of US health systems with a shared vision of saving lives with data. Truveta offers innovative solutions to enable researchers to find cures faster, empower every clinician to be an expert, and help families make the most informed decisions about their care. Truveta’s data is licensed for healthcare research, not targeted advertising. To learn more, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and sign up for our newsletter.