News Releases

The Center Selects Research Initiative on Asthma for Collaboration to Innovation Grant

The Center for Health Affairs has selected a project aimed at improving care for patients with asthma as the recipient of its Collaboration to Innovation grant. This unique offering, in partnership with IPC Global, provides the opportunity for a research project to employ the innovative inProcess Research platform.

inProcess Research is a technology tool that can be used to manage data-intensive research projects, including multiple datasets from a variety of sources, and that leverages advanced features such as machine learning and artificial intelligence to reveal patterns and make predictions.

A team of researchers from Cleveland Clinic – Chao-Ping Wu, MD; Joe Zein, MD, PhD, MBA; and Shravan Kethireddy, MD, FACP – were selected for their work to transform asthma care. Their project aims to use personalized prediction models to change patients’ and physicians’ behaviors to optimize medication compliance and improve outcomes. They will integrate clinical, environmental and socioeconomic data to generate a personalized probability of exacerbation and individual action plans to improve asthma control.

This research initiative aligns with several of The Center’s priorities for this grant, including healthy communities & population health, social determinants of health innovation, and health outcomes & quality improvement. Asthma affects 1 in 13 people in the United States and disproportionately impacts minority populations and individuals with low socioeconomic status.

Not only does uncontrolled asthma negatively impact health and quality of life for the individuals burdened with it, it also comes at an economic cost. In 2018, uncontrolled asthma accounted for 1.6 million emergency department visits and about 178,000 hospitalizations. Over the next 20 years, the estimated direct cost of this care will total $300.6 billion.

“This research project is a great match for what The Center for Health Affairs is seeking to accomplish with this initiative,” said Endrit Meta, director of technology and data for The Center. “It has the potential to improve health for individuals with asthma, address health disparities, and decrease the cost of care.  We look forward to seeing how the project leverages the capabilities of inProcess Research to achieve its goals.”

About inProcess Research and IPC Global

As a premier data, analytics and cloud solution provider in healthcare, IPC Global has worked very closely with some of the largest health systems in the U.S. and Canada to modernize their business processes and drive positive outcomes. During the early onset of the pandemic IPC Global took a leadership role in transforming medical research through its development of the inProcess Research platform, its on-demand research platform that empowers researchers to answer questions quickly, collaborative with other institutions and use large datasets.

For more on The Center for Health Affairs’ technology and data initiatives, contact us.