Analytics firm SAS is working with Microsoft to build deep technology integrations, making health analytics more accessible to healthcare and life science organisations.

The collaboration aims to boosts healthcare interoperability by enabling the use of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards and through integration from Azure Health Data Services to SAS Health on Azure.

Microsoft recently announced the availability of Azure Health Data Services, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering designed to support protected health information (PHI) in the cloud. By connecting to Azure Health Data Services, the embedded AI capabilities of SAS Health can be more efficient and secure, expanding the possibilities of patient-centric innovation and trusted collaboration across the health landscape.

“The lack of data standardisation in the industry has trapped health insights in functional silos,” said Steve Kearney, global medical director at SAS. “Providers and payers alike struggle to manually reconcile incompatible file formats, which slow the transfer of information and negatively impacts quality care and patient experience.”

Global adoption of the FHIR industry data standard – which defines how health care information can be exchanged between different computer systems – is growing. Major electronic health record (EHR) companies are moving quickly to support FHIR and, in the USA, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has mandated its use.

The Azure Health Data Services API model allows the transfer of FHIR data to Azure’s PaaS infrastructure. The harmonised FHIR datasets persisting on Azure Health Data Services enable FHIR-based requests of specific data, speeding up queries to near-real time and protecting patient data.

Secure health cloud environments such as Azure Health Data Services present the opportunity for real-time integration of patient and claims data. The platform hosts both transactional and analytical workloads from the same data store and enables cloud computing to transform the development and delivery of AI across the healthcare ecosystem.

“The integration between Azure Health Data Services and SAS Health can be transformational for organisations that have struggled to operationalise analytics,” said Kearney. “The use of diverse health data throughout the process of care in a shared cloud environment enables a clearer path from analytics to improved healthcare outcomes.”

The collaboration between SAS and Microsoft Azure offers integrated technology that is secure, fast and scalable for healthcare delivery and research stakeholders, including:

• Providers: SAS Health on FHIR gives speedy access to analytic insights within EHRs, parsing out only the information needed. Quality care and patient satisfaction increase when providers can integrate data across multiple estates and record types, including patient records and claims data, into a single view.
• Payers: Payers governed by CMS are already mandated to transition to FHIR-based communication standards and are experiencing early wins. With FHIR, payers can securely query patient records to determine the medical necessity of a service or procedure and whether appropriate authorisation was obtained, potentially cutting time spent dramatically.
• Academic health researchers: For clinical research, data sharing can be a common, time-consuming obstacle. FHIR-ready data sets can accelerate the generation of new health insights and expand the universe of data types for research, including social determinants of health, real-world data, genetics, device data from the internet of medical things (IoMT) and more.
• Life sciences: As the availability and usage of real-world data increases, FHIR-based interoperability enables pharma companies to generate intelligence on drug safety and efficacy on a broader data set than previously available.

“Ultimately, these innovations in health data analytic interoperability can make insights faster across the vast ecosystem of professionals who are committed to a healthier world,” said Kearney. “While technology is only one part, improving health begins with predicting future health risks and taking proactive steps to mitigate disease and promote physical and mental wellness.”