Healthcare insurer Aetna has created Aetna Innovation Labs to focus on ways to improve patient outcomes by leveraging data and best practices.
Two of the first projects aim to speed the identification and use of the best clinical practices in cancer care and achieve optimal health for those at risk for metabolic syndrome.
The Aetna Innovation Labs, with a dedicated team will make it possible for Aetna to test specific initiatives such as those related to disease prediction and intervention, rapidly determine success rates and impact across populations of members and quickly expand programs that show promise, Aetna officials said when they announced the initiative on Aug. 27.
"The marketplace is rapidly changing," said Aetna Chairman, CEO and President Mark T. Bertolini. "Forces such as healthcare reform, emerging technologies and economic conditions are driving our need to constantly develop innovative and measurable programs to improve healthcare quality and reduce costs for our customers and members."
Bertolini called the labs, "the innovation engine that is helping us stay one step ahead of the changing marketplace.
The team is dedicated to developing and leveraging solutions that are two to three years ahead of the market as well as identifying new ideas and bringing them to life, he said.
New leadership
Michael Palmer, who joined Aetna last September, will head the project. Palmer came to Aetna after a 25-year career of consulting in IT and business strategy, assessment and execution, large-scale transformation initiatives and organizational design.
He joined Aetna from Accenture, where he was most recently Global Managing Partner of Accenture's Medical Technology business. In this role, he also led two of Accenture's large client relationships focused on improving their businesses and growing profitably.
"The Aetna Innovation Labs is a unique environment within Aetna where we are looking at healthcare in a totally new way," said Palmer. "Instead of asking 'why,' we're asking 'why not.' We're partnering with innovators, applying emerging technologies that are widely used in the consumer marketplace, and measuring the outcomes. The focus is on improving the lives of the people we serve, while providing a better value for each dollar that is spent on health care."
Cancer care
The Aetna Innovation Labs is working to make cancer care more effective, more affordable and safer for members, Palmer said, by deploying technology that promotes the best clinical practices in cancer care, including the eviti clinical decision-support program.
Aetna is making eviti available through its data exchange and applications platform, iNexx, and launching the program in New York and New Jersey. Participating oncologists will have real-time access to a decision-support tool based on what Aetna executives describe as "one of the most comprehensive and unbiased digital libraries of evidence-based treatment regimens available." Treatment options are aligned with each patient's clinical background and benefit plan to simplify payment. The options are available in real time.
The idea is to simplify workflow, streamline payment for physicians and reduce variability in care.
"We expect adherence to evidence-based care to increase to 80 percent or more once oncologists begin using eviti, further strengthening Aetna's focus on making cancer care more effective, more affordable and safer for our members," said Lonny Reisman, MD, Aetna chief medical officer and chair of the Aetna Innovation Council.
Metabolic syndrome and heart disease
Another project combines "big data" provided by Aetna with a supercomputer-enabled platform from GNS Healthcare. GNS will apply its technology platform to this data to rapidly discover what types of interventions drive better outcomes in those who are at-risk for metabolic syndrome, and for whom these interventions work best. Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors – including large waist size, high blood pressure and high fasting blood sugar – that raises the risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke. The intervention program for metabolic syndrome will be tested with a large employer group, and rolled out more broadly based on the results of the pilot program.
"While we are expanding Aetna's approach to metabolic syndrome to include a variety of medical management and patient engagement strategies, we need a data-driven approach to quickly know what works best and for which patients," said Reisman. "This 'big data' approach should be enormously helpful as we introduce new interventions, letting us quickly identify what works, what doesn't, and rapidly adjust as appropriate. Our expectation is that this approach will ultimately allow us to spend less time focused on analytics, and more time focused on the people we serve."
Future projects to be undertaken by the Aetna Innovation Labs will include clinical innovations that better predict illnesses and improve life-long health; platform innovations that leverage existing Aetna technologies and identify new technologies; and improving member and provider engagement by better understanding barriers to care and motivators for engaging in a healthy lifestyle.