Driving Healthcare Innovation by Translating Science Into Practice

Dr. Frank Maddux leads clinical care delivery, research and scientific affairs for the nation's largest vertically-integrated healthcare system, a network of dialysis facilities, outpatient cardiac and vascular labs, urgent care centers, specialty pharmacy and laboratory services, insurance companies, physician business products and research organizations. Physician, healthcare executive, IT entrepreneur and scholar, Dr. Maddux has devoted more than 30 years toward the advancement of renal care and its underlying science.

FWM: Fresenius Medical Care began investing in value-based care over a decade ago because we recognized early on the increasing need to consider each of the health system drivers of patient outcomes, looking at the whole picture of converged clinical and financial data. Value-based care challenges us to improve quality of care, patient outcomes and to reduce costs, all while assuming full responsibility for the totality of our patients' care. In the renal care space, these programs are designed to address the complex conditions that affect people living with kidney disease, a broad spectrum of chronic conditions that include diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and more. Value-based care requires a look at kidney disease that considers the full breadth of that spectrum: both the traditional life-sustaining dialysis procedure for patients with end-stage kidney disease, as well as the adjacent conditions that impact patients with chronic kidney disease. In the case of Fresenius Medical Care, our unique vertical integration, ability to harness the power of science as it evolves and commitment to rethinking how we listen to patients is fundamental to our success in value-based care.

FWM: Data is a quintessential driver for healthcare innovation, and the ability to listen through numbers is a hallmark of the world's most innovative healthcare companies, those who've mastered creating insight from information. The ability for companies to overlay data from their own clinical ecosystem with population data and other large datasets allows insights into conclusions that are otherwise invisible. These data-driven insights pave the way for high-utility predictive analytics that are foundational to personalized medicine.

FWM: We hear a lot about “patient experience,” yet beyond the customer service aspects of those concepts, it's the personalized, informed care that sits at the heart of the patient experience. We must not only listen to what our patients tell us, but also what our patient care diagnostics tell us. Reconsidering the devices and tools used for kidney-related treatments as sophisticated sensing devices, capable of collecting key information about the patient's health status on the day of their treatment, can influence the patterns of prescribing and care that an individual patient needs on that day. With data that is relevant to both the patient's treatment and the associated therapeutic response, we can imagine a future where more advanced sensing is integrated into our therapeutic tools, enabling the possibility of transforming real-time clinical data into actionable information.

FWM: It strikes me that what these terms are really suggesting is the need to continually develop our capabilities to use science, mathematics, research and technology to deliver care that addresses the universe of healthcare challenges at the individual level. Examples in our case include using complex analytics to help predict patient outcomes and risks, conducting virtual clinical trials by using advanced mathematics to model actual patients in silico, and reimagining the traditional classification of kidney disease to consider genetic and molecular disease signatures that will eventually pave the road for truly personalized kidney care. In the long run, these innovations will help reduce costs and improve both care quality and outcomes by systematically hyper-personalizing care, reducing waste and avoiding unnecessary or contraindicated therapies. While these are emerging areas, it is indeed a commitment to continual learning and adaptation that will lead healthcare organizations to success in the industry's ever-evolving future.

To learn more about how the business of healthcare delivery is being transformed at Fresenius Medical Care North America, view the 2018 Annual Medical Report at fmcna.com/AMR.