Booz Allen Hamilton and MedStar Institute for Innovation Fuse Data Science and Clinical Expertise to Improve Patient Safety

WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - Nov 11, 2015) - Booz Allen Hamilton and the MedStar Institute for Innovation (MI2) have formed a strategic collaboration through which Booz Allen will fuse its data science expertise with MedStar Health's clinical expertise to develop novel analytic techniques that will improve health outcomes, enhance clinical care and uncover key insights related to patient safety.

Mark Smith, MD, MedStar's chief innovation officer and director of MI2, and Karen Dahut, Booz Allen's executive vice president and leader of the firm's Strategic Innovation Group, made the announcement today, during a keynote address at the 2015 mHealth Summit, part of the HIMSS Connected Health Conference at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.

"Our collaboration provides an extraordinary opportunity to address core healthcare challenges through data science solutions that can be applied in live clinical settings," Smith said. "With MedStar's primary mission being patient care, MI2 is focused on innovation that matters to our patients and our clinical caregivers. We see tremendous potential through this partnership to improve patient care and enhance patient safety."

"Today, as the promise of data science to improve organizational problem-solving manifests itself, Booz Allen is actively exploring potential applications for data science across the healthcare landscape," said Dahut. "As part of this work, we are thrilled to partner with MI2, an organization at the forefront of efforts to impart innovation into the day-to-day of care delivery with the goal of making patient care safer, more efficient, and higher quality."

Booz Allen will work with MedStar's patient safety event reporting database, which associates are encouraged to use to self-report safety hazards as part of a systemwide initiative to make care better and safer. The data scientists will also work with MedStar's radiology reporting system to identify a means of expediting the flow of critical diagnostic information for streamlined clinical decision-making in the emergency department.

With the event reporting database, Booz Allen will perform data mining techniques to form a robust understanding of safety issues and potential improvements. Then, using natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, the team will scrutinize unstructured clinical data and use open source biomedical ontologies to identify drugs, symptoms, and procedures in free text. Finally, they will apply prescriptive and predictive modeling to identify trends and emerging patient safety issues. MI2 will use its clinical expertise and human factors expertise to apply these insights to patient care.

Similarly, in radiology, Booz Allen will create machine learning algorithms to classify radiology data according to custom ontology of radiology terms developed in conjunction with MI2 experts, helping alert clinicians of patients who require immediate clinical attention. 

About Booz Allen
Booz Allen Hamilton has been at the forefront of strategy and technology for more than 100 years. Today, the firm provides management and technology consulting and engineering services to leading Fortune 500 corporations, governments, and not-for-profits across the globe. Booz Allen partners with public and private sector clients to solve their most difficult challenges through a combination of consulting, analytics, mission operations, technology, systems delivery, cybersecurity, engineering, and innovation expertise.

With international headquarters in McLean, Virginia, the firm employs more than 22,500 people globally, and had revenue of $5.27 billion for the 12 months ended March 31, 2015. To learn more, visit www.boozallen.com.

About The MedStar Institute for Innovation
The MedStar Institute for Innovation (MI2) was chartered by Ken Samet, President and CEO of MedStar Health, in 2009 and serves as a catalyst and seed crystal for innovation across the entire MedStar organization. The mission of MI2 is to catalyze innovation that advances health; its mantra is "Think Differently." MI2's foundational premises are: 1. A huge amount of untapped and undertapped creative and intellectual energy exists at MedStar; 2. the tyranny of the daily trumps the pursuit of the remarkable (…in the absence of a countervailing force). MI2's scope includes initiatives in human factors engineering, education and simulation training, information infrastructure, technology development and commercialization, and processes and systems of care delivery. Visit MI2.medstarhealth.org.