Epic's Cosmos clinical informatics database is allowing health systems and researchers to find insights on how to treat blood pressure and rare diseases and even identify victims of human trafficking, the Wisconsin State Journal reported Aug. 23.
The database includes anonymized information from 210 million patients at more than 200 hospitals, according to the story.
Just this month, Cosmos launched Look-Alikes, a program that enables clinicians to discover how similar rare-disease patients were treated by other providers. "We're hoping this can connect more physicians and shorten some of those rare-disease odysseys that patients have to go on," Epic informaticist Phil Lindemann said Aug. 22 at the EHR vendor's annual Users Group Meeting in Verona, Wis.
The data can go granular. Epic research informaticist Harry Freedman said he analyzed which medications worked best in treating nearly 200,000 Black women between the ages of 55 and 64 who smoke and have high blood pressure. "This is probably the largest retrospective trial that's ever been done for this cohort," he said.
Zhe Chen, MD, medical director of data science at Allentown, Pa.-based Lehigh Valley Health Network, said only three patients at his health system had claimed to be involved in human trafficking but he found 100 in Cosmos, allowing him to help improve screening for victims, according to the story. "These are things you can't necessarily study in your home institution," he said.