New York State Commissioner of Health Nirav Shah is the Billy Beane of health care.

Let me explain. 

Billy Beane—the general manager and minority owner of the Oakland Athletics—and made famous in the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, was made even more famous when Brad Pitt portrayed him in the movie adaptation. (Generally speaking, having Brad Pitt portray you is a good way to get famous.)

For those who aren’t familiar, Moneyball is about how, under Beane’s unconventional leadership, “the Oakland Athletics achieved an amazing winning streak while having the smallest player payroll in Major League Baseball. (Short answer: creative use of data.)” (Thank you, New York Times.)

Touré McCluskey is the founder of OkCopay, a search engine for medical procedures whose mission is to provide consumers with objective information so they can make better choices about their health care. He is also a PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, a program that Pioneer co-sponsored. Touré’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

When you want to buy something at the store, you check the price tag. Why can’t it be this easy to figure out the cost of medical care?

It should be.

Consider, for a moment, the story of Tracy, an uninsured waitress trying to find out how much a dental procedure would cost before making an appointment. Calling providers didn’t help her, because they themselves didn’t know the prices; dealing with multiple insurance companies often makes it difficult for providers to know how much a procedure will actually cost a patient. As a result, Tracy was left with a surprisingly high bill she did not expect—and could not afford.

In a recent post in The Health Care Blog, Archimedes Founder David Eddy, MD, makes a strong case for the new Global Cardiovascular Risk score (GCVR), because it will keep providers more focused on preventing disease and give them a more accurate and meaningful target to shoot for to keep patients healthy. This project, to test the merits of a new way to measure the health outcomes of patients with heart disease and diabetes, is an example of a truly disruptive innovation that could be a real game-changer for measuring quality. Read Dr. Eddy’s full post below.

-Nancy Barrand  

Wall Street Journal reporter Laura Landro’s recent interview with a front-line doctor underscores why we need more meaningful ways to measure quality. Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Victor Montori, who specializes in treating people with chronic illnesses, says health care systems and doctors are not being rewarded for preventing disease and instead pressured to satisfy measures that mean little for patients or health.

By Patrick van der Valk, member of the Archimedes team

This blog entry was originally posted to HealthData.gov on October 29, 2012.

The Archimedes Healthcare Simulator (ARCHeS) is a Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) solution that provides health experts access to the Archimedes Model, via a web portal, to answer complex health care questions. The Archimedes Model is a full-scale computer simulation model of human physiology, diseases, behaviors, interventions and health care systems. Through advanced methods of mathematics, computing, and data systems, the Model enables users to run clinically realistic virtual trials that drive better decisions in health and economic outcomes research, comparative effectiveness research, and program and policy design and utilization.

ARCHeS (video and explanation), which launched in May 2011 under a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, allows users to run their own virtual trial by setting up populations, eligibility criteria, standard or custom interventions, and care processes. Users submit their query to the Archimedes Model through the ARCHeS Setup Tool to be queued for a simulation. The Model performs calculations to simulate each person in the population and delivers a dataset via the Archimedes Outcomes Analyzer (AOA) within 24 hours. The AOA allows users to see health and economic outcomes and explore different combinations of interventions and outcomes.