For more than a decade, MU Health Care has worked with Cerner Corporation to improve the lives of Missourians through the Tiger Institute for Health Innovation. Now, a new collaboration between Cerner and AWS will help to improve the speed of innovation and patients’ experiences by using cloud-enabled technology and artificial intelligence tools.

Data from MU Health Care’s electronic health record (EHR) is currently housed in secure servers at Cerner headquarters in Kansas City. The data is kept separate from other Cerner clients across the globe. As Cerner uses AWS, this data will be migrated into secure cloud-based storage. As a result, Cerner will be able to develop and use algorithms that sift for patterns not just in MU Health Care data, but among data from other health care organizations.

MU Health Care currently uses patterns to help identify which treatments will be most effective based on an individual’s genes, environment and lifestyle, an approach known as precision medicine. Precision medicine will be a key component of the NextGen Precision Health Initiative by helping to accelerate medical breakthroughs for both patients in Missouri and beyond.

With the increase in available data thanks to the collaboration between Cerner and AWS, these algorithms will be able to identify more patterns and stronger associations that can help clinicians offer even more personalized care to their patients.

“With a rich set of data sources in the cloud, we will be able to use algorithms that will put AI and machine learning capabilities in the hands of our providers,” said Bryan Bliven, chief information officer for MU Health Care and executive director of the Tiger Institute. “These predictive algorithms — many of which don’t even exist yet — have the potential to change how clinical decisions are made and how care is delivered.”

One of MU Health Care’s current algorithms uses data in the EHR to spot subtle symptoms that may put patients at risk of developing sepsis. The tool catches cues that human eyes aren’t necessarily able to spot.

With Cerner and AWS, MU Health Care will be supported to quickly and efficiently implement new algorithms and rapidly deploy new technologies.

Currently, as Cerner develops new software and widgets, MU Health Care manually integrates them into its IT infrastructure. This process can take several months because software often needs to be configured for a smooth integration. However, powered by AWS, new updates from Cerner can automatically be deployed into MU Health Care’s infrastructure. A process that could take a matter of months could instead be done in a matter of days.