Clinical Knowledge Exchange: A New Technology Framework Enabling an Ecosystem of Connected Healthcare Applications to Drive Optimal Outcomes

Apixio, Inc., the leading provider of clinical data integration, search and analytics for healthcare organizations, is introducing this week at the HIMSS 2012 conference, a technology framework called the Clinical Knowledge Exchange (CKX). Apixio’s CKX combines efficient patient data aggregation with knowledge of optimal actions derived from big data analysis to enable healthcare systems and Accountable Care Organizations to meet their quality, outcome, reimbursement and cost objectives.

Clinical Knowledge Exchange is a technical framework that automates extraction and delivery of precise and actionable information to a person (e.g. clinician, care manager, or coder) or application, such as a quality reporting system, that is best equipped to turn that knowledge into results. By prioritizing information required to help achieve an objective, the CKX framework places less information technology burden on a healthcare organization. This approach can, in many cases, mitigate privacy and data ownership issues.

“Integral to CKX is its sophisticated mapping of millions of medical concepts with one another based upon their strength of association, as determined by processing very large medical corpora, standard medical terminologies and millions of clinical documents,” says Darren Schulte, Chief Medical Officer for Apixio.

Based on these medical associations, for example, CKX can anticipate that information in a patient record about Plavix, an anti-clotting medication, would be highly relevant to a clinician searching that patient’s history of coronary heart disease in their EHR. CKX can then proactively inform the clinician that Plavix was mentioned in a recent progress note’s medication list but is absent from the patient’s reconciled medication list - a potential quality of care gap. Similarly, CKX can recognize that a sudden increase in a congestive heart failure patient’s body weight, as recorded in a third-party patient portal, may be indicative of an impending medical crisis. This prompts CKX to send an action notification to the application used by the patient’s clinical team, potentially preventing a hospital admission.

Using medical associations, CKX reveals clinical data hidden in narrative text and scanned documents across the community, which has been shown to represent more than 60% of a patient’s key clinical history. As an example, CKX can intelligently extract diabetic foot exams documented in narrative text, structure and intelligently codify the information, and deliver it to quality reporting and decision support tools, in essence providing information that far better represents the patient experience.

CKX can analyze and identify trends in clinical and billing data and adapt its models so that information can be used more efficiently in a healthcare system to achieve specific financial objectives. For example, Apixio has proven that capitated payments under the Medicare Advantage Plan can be significantly increased by healthcare organizations using CKX. The CKX framework identifies key knowledge about a patient’s medical history that has not been documented for Medicare Advantage HCC coding and routes it to a clinician or coder within their existing workflow. This knowledge exchange allows actions to be taken that result in more accurate risk characterization and higher capitated payments.

“High-value care can be realized once we turn patient data aggregated from many different sources into clinical knowledge and can easily deliver it to care providers and systems within a healthcare application network,” says Shawn Dastmalchi, Chief Executive Officer for Apixio. “With more provider- and consumer-facing applications connected into the CKX, the more valuable and powerful this framework becomes.”

About Apixio Inc.

Privately held and based in San Mateo, California, Apixio Inc. is the leading provider of integration, search and big data analytics solutions for healthcare organizations. Apixio helps healthcare organizations deliver high-value care by enabling them to better leverage data.