In industries like finance and retail, vast data is leveraged to generate billions in profits. Yet, in healthcare, the struggle to access critical information persists—a challenge that directly impacts patient outcomes. The core issue? Over 80% of medical data for identifying at-risk patients and delivering preventive care is unstructured. It’s hidden in physician notes, radiological images, pathology slides, PDF files, faxes, PowerPoint slides, and emails, making it difficult and costly to access and utilize.
Improving Patient Outcomes with Data Intelligence
The growth of medical devices, genetic testing, patient-generated health data, and widespread electronic health record (EHR) usage has led to a 47% annual increase in healthcare data generation. Artificial intelligence (AI) seems like an obvious solution to unlocking the life-saving potential of healthcare data. However, there are complex requirements when building and validating AI tools that can enable clinical insights:
- Access to vast amounts of data across a wide range of therapeutic areas
- Data governance, privacy and ethics considerations
- Deployment challenges associated with complex, highly secure and regulated healthcare systems
To solve this problem, Pentavere, a leading healthcare AI and data science company, created a clinical AI solution that unlocks the power of healthcare data to improve patient outcomes. Pentavere’s DARWEN AI technology enables the automation of data abstraction from unstructured electronic medical records by quickly and cost-effectively analyzing, cataloging and organizing clinical text data. DARWEN AI accelerates the discovery of potentially lifesaving insights by identifying patients who are eligible for approved medications or other therapeutics.
Accelerating Innovation with Databricks
Pentavere’s team of AI engineers leveraged the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform to unify data and AI assets when developing and deploying their DARWEN AI system. Several platform components addressed data privacy concerns while giving Pentavere the ability to wrangle vast amounts of unstructured data:
- Unity Catalog: Manages data assets securely and in compliance with regulations like HIPAA and GDPR.
- Compute: Offers scalable, cost-effective clusters for handling massive EHR data volumes.
- Model Serving: Streamlines compound AI system workflows, reducing development overhead and accelerating time to value.
Databricks Mosaic AI tools have enabled Pentavere to efficiently develop and deploy AI-powered solutions like DARWEN AI. Many of Pentavere’s pharmaceutical clients also use Databricks, making it easier for them to deploy Pentavere’s predictive and generative AI applications, such as data management automation and clinical text summarization.
Healthcare Data: The Path Forward
The initial inspiration for DARWEN AI came from one of the co-founder’s experiences with the healthcare industry. Steven Aviv, Pentavere’s CTO, faced the loss of a close family member due to a complication that was easily treatable if healthcare practitioners had access to the right clinical data.
Pentavere developed DARWEN AI through use cases that have been validated in over 35 clinical studies, published in peer-reviewed journals, and recognized with multiple industry accolades. Some examples of DARWEN AI’s real-world applications include:
- Clinical decision-making in cancer treatments
- Prevention of cardiac events in heart failure patients
- Faster diagnosis for rare disease patients using LLMs
- Support for a regional cancer center ’s learning health system
- Innovative dermatology insights for timely patient treatment
- Predictive analysis for ophthalmologists to prevent vision loss
- Efficient trial workflows through automation
In December 2023, Pentavere joined HEALWELL AI, a leading healthcare technology company focused on AI-driven preventative care. This partnership accelerates healthcare innovation, enhancing outcomes at an unprecedented scale. Pentavere’s work with Databricks has empowered their team to tackle larger healthcare challenges and continue their mission of innovation, enhancing patient outcomes at an unprecedented scale.
Pentavere has also partnered with WELL Health Technologies, Canada's largest operator of outpatient health clinics and a provider of EMR services to clinics and doctors across the country. Pentavere supports WELL with access to cutting-edge technology, accelerating healthcare innovation across multiple therapeutic areas with data and AI-powered solutions.
This blog post was jointly authored by Steven Aviv (Pentavere) and Marco Graziano (Databricks).