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There also were some concerns about how other providers may react to a data mining tool being used on their patients. Would physicians think St. Francis was trying to steal their patients away? Would radiologists speak out about having their echo reads poured over by AI and NLP?

But it quickly became clearto Pasquarello and everyone else who saw the solution in actionthat data mining was a success. St. Francis started identifying yet-to-be treated severe AS patients right away, helping get those patients on the road to recovery. Meanwhile, referring physicians learned to trust data minings discoveries, and radiologists saw it as a helpful quality initiative.

Pasquarello says the data mining tool is 100% customizable, allowing the user to filter out anything they dont need and focus on the exact targets of their searches. It also learns from its users as time goes on, remembering the details of previous searches to improve the customization process.

In a way, it mines a lot deeper into the data than we would on our own, Pasquarello says.

And while TAVR patients were the primary target of its early efforts, St. Francis is now able to use the technology platform to find more patients who may require other, less common structural heart procedures.

Awareness about TAVR is pretty good right now, but that isnt the case yet with some of the newer procedures that are out there, Pasquarello says. That makes it even more important to identify patients who need our help. A lot of primary care physicians and even general cardiologists just dont know everything going on in, say, the mitral space or tricuspid space. Mining echo data helps us spread the word about what our heart center can do.

After the four-month trial, the Mpirik offering had reviewed more than 5,000 echocardiography exams, identified 31 new patients with severe AS, and directly led to eight new patients undergoing TAVR at St. Francis. An additional seven new patients underwent mitral valve interventions, and two more new patients underwent balloon valvuloplasty procedures.

The clinical and administrative teams both chose to invest in Mpirik long-term.

Mpirik allowed us to identify new patients who otherwise would not have been identified. Through our own analysis, we found that the cost of Mpirik was paid for by performing four extra TAVR procedures per year, Pasquarello adds. Knowing how easy it would be to hit that number, everyone involved agreed it was a smart idea to invest in the platform and move forward.

More information on Mpirik is available here.

Disclaimer: Operational, clinical, and financial impact calculations were provided by St. Francis Hospital. Results may vary and depend on site implementation of recommendations.

1Mpirik data on file

Originally posted here:

Data mining helps hospitals identify new patients in need of TAVR ... - Cardiovascular Business