Cerner today announced that Cloudera, a provider of enterprise analytic data management powered by Apache Hadoop will power its Big Data platform with a Cloudera enterprise data hub (EDH) to create a holistic understanding of the healthcare system and to improve patient outcomes. By utilizing Cloudera’s enterprise data hub, the company is expanding beyond its traditional focus on EMR to gather and analyze the world’s healthcare data in an effort to reduce costs and make the delivery of healthcare more efficient. Cerner clients have already reported that the new system has helped saved hundreds of lives by providing more accurate predictions around patient health. To date, Cerner’s devices and services are utilized in over 14,000 medical facilities around the world, such as hospitals, integrated delivery networks, ambulatory offices and physicians’ offices.
Cerner chose Cloudera’s offering after comparing similar solutions based on the following criteria:
– Proof points including management tooling, scalability, performance, price, security, partner integration, training, and support options, among others.
– Alignment with Cerner’s philosophies including building a simpler platform that could be used by a wide range of skill sets.
– Dedication and participation in open source community projects – specifically Crunch and Kite.
Today, Cerner’s enterprise data hub contains more than two petabytes (PB) of data in a multi-tenant environment, supporting several hundred clients. Unique to Cerner is its ability to pull data from an almost unlimited number of sources. Due to the steady flood of data and rapidly expanding environment, Cloudera Manager has been imperative in providing a holistic view of Cerner’s Big Data platform and helps easily manage multiple clusters.
The Solution
The platform ingests multiple different EMRs, HL7 feeds, Health Information Exchange information, claims data, and custom extracts from a variety of proprietary or client-owned data sources, uses Apache Kafka to ingest real-time data streams, and then pushes data to the appropriate HBase or HDFS cluster using Apache Storm.
Data moves from the Cloudera environment to Cerner’s HP Vertica data marts via bulk loads, giving data scientists, SAP Business Objects users, and SAS users the ability to interact with Hadoop data for broad reporting and analysis using tools they’re familiar with. Cerner has also taken steps to ensure the security and data integrity of its Big Data platform.
“After evaluating the different options, Cloudera earned the highest marks. Since implementing Cloudera, Cerner is already making discoveries,” said Ryan Brush, senior director and distinguished engineer, Cerner. “For example, we can now accurately determine the probability that a patient has a bloodstream infection. Our clients are reporting that the new system has actually saved hundreds of lives by being able to predict if a patient has sepsis more effectively than they could before.”
