UNC selects IBM storage for disease treatment development

IBM has teamed with University of North Carolina Health Care (UNCHC) to develop new treatments for diseases, such as diabetes, cystic fibrosis and cancer, using IBM software and hardware to support the Carolina Data Warehouse for Health (CDW-H).

The CDW-H focuses on diabetes disease management and performance measurement. With the storage provided by the CDW-H, medical researchers can analyze vast amounts of patient data quickly and can uncover trends, according to Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM.

"With the deployment of the CDW-H, we have been able to increase the timeliness of the information available to our researchers, staff and physicians," said Donald Spencer, MD, associate director of medical Informatics of UNCHC. "Because the system can also support general queries that relate to the diagnosis and treatment of a wide array of patients, we are now able to make more intelligent decisions leading to improved patient care."

The data warehouse is built on the IBM Health Integration Framework and takes advantage of InfoSphere and WebSphere software, running on System Z mainframe and P-Series computers, IBM said. UNCHC has now moved the data warehouse into production with a secure Web portal, providing access to anatomized cohort query selection, diabetes and inpatient data marts, business intelligence reports and analytics applications and supporting clinical translation research, IBM said.





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