Insurer Highmark and its provider partner Allegheny Health Network will invest $11 million in the creation of the Disruptive Health Technology Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, in a collaboration to come up with breakthroughs to make health care more affordable, simplified and accessible.
Partnering with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) will enable innovative strategies to be clinically tested and then rapidly delivered to patients, the insurer said in a recent news release.
The research lab will concentrate on areas including accessibility of medical diagnostics, behavior change, chronic disease management, data mining, improved endoscopy and diagnostic ultrasound and better infection prevention.
Highmark is looking to innovation as a means to improve care for its members and for the patients in the Allegheny Health Network, its recently created integrated delivery network in greater Pittsburgh. A focus on health and wellness programs, prevention and medication compliance can improve patient health, quality of life and reduce health care costs.
When Highmark created the Allegheny Health Network as a competitor to the region's largst provider, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the payer wanted to offer different options and choices for patients to help transform health care in the region, said Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., Highmark president and CEO. "Partnering with… CMU will open the door to the ideas and innovations that we need…," he said in the release.
By using Highmark's claims data, CMU will be able to learn where current clinical practice is most inaccurate and expensive, said Alan Russell, a CMU professor who will oversee the Disruptive Health Technology Institute's operations and the Highmark Distinguished Professor, a position the insurer created in the CMU College of Engineering's Institute for Complex Engineered Systems. Previously, he was the founding director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
Russell said that he believes the new center will help reduce costs not only in the Pennsylvania region but across the nation.
"Disruptive innovation has brought affordability and quality products to a variety of industry sectors, but health care has not yet experienced that pioneering drive," he said. "Our new DHTI initiative is designed to create a framework for categorizing and developing novel disruptive technologies to improve health care by increasing availability and reducing cost."
The innovative center plans to launch seven projects by Aug. 1, each already close to producing results, according to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"This is a distinct partnership in that health insurance companies don't usually invest in research," said Mark Kamlet, CMU provost and executive vice president, in the news release.