Supernova Award Category

The Problem

As part of their personalized medicine initiative aimed at improving research outcomes in search of cures to cancer and other diseases; UPMC aimed to provide complete transparency into the cost of care. Through this analytical effort, they also will examine variability across the enterprise

The Solution

UPMC would support enterprise analytics with a complete platform including data management capabilities, UPMC studied the market and chose leading vendors for each part of the analytics platform; selecting Informatica for end to end enterprise information management . In addition to offering a common  unified platform for data integration, data governance and master data management, UPMC liked that Informatica’s user interfaces scaled to directly support business users and were, best of all, easy to use. UPMC recognizes that good data is everyone’s job – not just IT.   The data governance teams are comprised of business analysts and they are entirely comfortable using Informatica.

With this platform as a backbone, UPMC set out to create a data governance program. By being able to provide the users with complete metadata access and tools to define a glossary of business terms, UPMC garnered business buy in. 

The results

Only eight months into the five year project, UPMC started to see the potential of this initiative in the

research arena. With the foundational architecture of UPMC’s new enterprise data warehouse and data management in place, researchers recently were able to electronically integrate—for the first time ever-- clinical and genomic information on 140 patients previously treated for breast cancer. Traditionally, these data have resided in separate information systems, making it difficult—if not impossible—to integrate and analyze dozens of variables. The researchers found intriguing molecular differences in the makeup of pre-menopausal vs. post-menopausal breast cancer, findings which will be further explored. This initial cancer insight is just the start of UPMC’s effort to mine massive amounts of data in the pursuit of smarter medicine.

Metrics

• Users can confidently answer test data questions: Where can I find the information I need?  is this data any good?  Where did this data come from?  What does this data mean?  What am I permitted to do with this data?
• Sustaining Data Governance Council composed of 15 senior leaders representing operational, clinical, financial, IT and research business units.
• Researchers electronically integrated - for the first time ever - clinical and genomic information on 140 patients previously treated for breast cancer. 

The Technology

• Informatica PowerCenter® Advanced and Real-Time Editions
• Informatica PowerExchange®
• Informatica Data Quality
• Informatica B2B
• Informatica Master Data Management
• Informatica Data Masking
• Informatica Complex Event Processing
• Informatica Professional Services

Informatica’s Metadata Manager 9.6.1 is used to create custom metadata models that extend far beyond basic data lineage

Disruptive Factor

The UPMC Data Governance Program, aims to engage everyone that touches or relies on data because Terri Mikol recognizes that only through “doing” will people begin to gain confidence in their analyses and shift from thinking “data is something IT works with” to thinking “better data is everyone’s job.”

No longer are reporting on readmission trends, length of stay, and utilization of patient care services enough to differentiate. Now healthcare organizations are being asked to predict patient outcomes, determine what it costs to take care of an entire population of diabetic patients throughout their lives, and to identify which chemotherapy will work best for a patient with a specific medical history and gene sequence.  Terri recognizes that the volume and variety of data in healthcare has far exceeded what IT and the informatics groups can manage alone, even with all of their talents and heroic efforts, IT cannot keep up with the demand. 

Shining Moment

I believe that the work Terri Mikol has done has shifted the thinking at UPMC; Data Governance is recognized as a program not a project with a beginning and an end – this program is changing the culture and evolving the way UPMC works - now, and into the future