Holmusk, a health tech firm based in Singapore and New York, has signed deals to use patient data from the University of Texas Health Science Center and the Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD to develop AI-powered analytic tools.

WHY IT MATTERS

The company will help create longitudinal patient records in both centres, which are still storing data in various legacy electronic health record systems. 

Based on a press statement, the agreements will provide Holmusk access to de-identified healthcare data for its development of AI analytic models that will "drive improved clinical outcomes". It will leverage its Natural Language Processing models and other AI capabilities to create an analytic tool that, for example, can identify patients at high risk of 30-day hospital readmission. 

The UTHealth Harris County Psychiatric Center is said to be the largest inpatient psychiatric care provider in Houston, Texas, while the Harris Center is a publicly funded outpatient behavioural health safety net provider. Both centres have a "strong collaborative relationship" to offer comprehensive and coordinated care to referred patients. Together, they serve above 80,000 patients annually.

Additionally, tapping on the dataset from both facilities will "fuel" the company's flagship digital platform NeuroBlu. The evidence platform for behavioural health ​​synthesises real-world data using analytic tools and enables users to derive insights. It has two decades worth of longitudinal clinical data with structured disease severity scores and NLP-derived symptoms, external stressors and side effects. 

THE LARGER TREND

Last month, Holmusk signed a three-year collaboration deal with New Jersey-based Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development & Commercialization. They will employ data analytics and AI on multiple real-world data to derive insights for improving patient outcomes. 

ON THE RECORD

"A fundamental premise at Holmusk is that real-world data can unlock our understanding of patient needs. We see significant potential to understand optimal care delivery and improve outcomes by using data efficiently to address the unmet need in mental health. We are excited to work with UTHealth HCPC and The Harris Center to bring together patient records and work with them to improve care delivery for future patients," Holmusk CMO Scott Kollins said.

"The Harris Center has worked closely with UTHealth HCPC for a number of years to provide the best continuum of care for our patients in and around Harris County. With thousands of patient referrals from UTHealth HCPC to The Harris Center every year, it's imperative that we have a robust dataset to not only make informed health-related decisions but to continue to create innovative solutions for those with severe behavioural health conditions," The Harris Center CEO Wayne Young stated.

"We are excited to partner with these premier behavioural health providers to integrate data sources in a way that, prior to now, has been impossible. Our data science capabilities will greatly facilitate the interoperability of patient health data across the care continuum to optimise outcomes," Joydeep Sarkar, chief data analytics officer at Holmusk, also commented.