HARTFORD, CT – Aetna is teaming with the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, for research aimed at analyzing healthcare data in new ways to further clinical research and improve the quality and cost of healthcare.

Members of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and Aetna clinicians and informatics specialists will conduct the research. It will be supervised by Isaac (Zak) Kohane, MD, a professor of pediatrics and health sciences and technology at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the school’s Center for Biomedical Informatics, and Brian Kelly, MD, head of Informatics and Strategic Alignment at Aetna.

Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine.

“Major advances in research and clinical care can be made by applying new bioinformatics techniques to large, aggregated clinical databases," said Kohane. "We are excited about the opportunity to work with Aetna to rapidly develop and deploy algorithms and applications that can make a real impact on biomedical discovery and patient care."

“If our healthcare system is going to become a ‘learning’ healthcare system, we need to better use the enormous amount of information we derive from healthcare to develop tools to understand what is happening today – such as which drugs are not working as safely as we thought, which therapies have unexpected benefits, what are the predictors of effective diabetes management and which genetic tests are likely to usefully guide therapy,” Kohane added. “Major advances in research and clinical care can be made by applying new bioinformatics techniques to large, aggregated clinical databases. We are excited about the opportunity to work with Aetna to rapidly develop and deploy algorithms and applications that can make a real impact on biomedical discovery and patient care,"

“We are delighted to be working with a thought leader in health are and bioinformatics like Harvard Medical School on this initiative,” said Kelly. “Aetna has been committed to using healthcare information technology to improve the quality and affordability of healthcare, and through this collaboration we believe we can together make an even greater impact.”

The researchers will focus on:

• Evaluating the outcomes of various treatments for specific conditions based on quality and cost;
• Determining factors that predict adherence to medical and drug treatments for chronic diseases;
• Studying how claims data and clinical data available through electronic health records can best be used to predict disease and follow outcomes; and
• Improving the ability to predict adverse events through the proactive study of claims and clinical data.