Cardinal Health showcased its MedMined services which help reduce the human and economic costs of infections at the 2008 HIMSS conference in Orlando, Fla.

Due to the lack of time and staff, hospitals do not have the capability to monitor every patient in every ward, especially those departments that are typically considered low-risk. However, with the use of MedMined services, the system actually alerts the hospital administrators about a possible outbreak by monitoring all the patients in the hospital, according to Troy Kirkpatrick, director of media relations at Cardinal.

Based on the technologies behind credit card fraud, MedMined differentiates itself from other data mining systems because it will only need very few cases or outbreaks of an infection to alert the system, Kirkpatrick said.

The capabilities of the MedMined services include:

• Access to and management of infection-related data throughout the facility and among all infections;
• Patented data mining technologies that automatically detect opportunities to prevent infections along with context-specific, best-practice recommendations to address emerging issues;
• Alerts of opportunities to better use antimicrobials;
• Objective outcomes measurement to track progress;
• No data entry – clinical, laboratory and pharmacy data is extracted from current systems in its existing format;
• Financial reporting with each hospital’s cost accounting data to demonstrate the cost, length of stay and profitability impact of hospital infections and inefficient antimicrobial usage; and
• Implementation in less than 60 days from contract execution.

MedMined has repeatedly produced a 300 percent internal rate of return within 12 months with objective measurement of clinical and financial benefits, Kirkpatrick said.