Newly-Launched Merck Digital Arm -- Ilúm -- Looks To Reduce In-Hospital Sepsis Costs

This is technically just an unincorporated operating group within mother Merck, apparently, but the recently-launched Ilúm Health Solutions (pretentious accent on the "u" included!) does have a laudable goal.

Sepsis infections represent (on a per patient basis) the most expensive in-patient non-surgical treated condition (at $21,000 per patient estimated average) most general providers face. This is due to the more than occasionally spotty early-diagnosis, and drug treatment protocols -- which tend to vary across hospitals -- especially away from large metropolitan teaching-hospital settings.

This Ilúm group of software tools (piloted in a hospital in Metairie, Louisiana -- just northwest of New Orleans), using existing legacy hospital IT data sets -- will seek to alleviate that set of unfortunate circumstances -- by more completely standardizing anti-microbial and anti-biotic protocols, and driving compliance with follow-up monitoring of the patients -- across the entire hospital, when any likely-septic patient is admitted. Here's a bit of the release:

. . . .ILÚM Insight™ – ID leverages data within existing hospital IT systems to promote optimal decision making and appropriate use of antimicrobials through its clinical decision support (CDS) system and Command Center (an intuitive data dashboard). These solutions enable case monitoring and prioritization—on an individual and aggregate level based on disease state—and promote early recognition of infectious diseases, appropriate interventions, and adherence to evidence-based clinical pathways. They also provide automated outcomes reporting that is configured to hospital-specific initiatives to track quality program performance.

In 2015, ILÚM initiated a collaboration with East Jefferson General Hospital (EJGH), a 424-bed general medical and surgical hospital in Metairie, La., to pilot ILÚM’s CDS system with an initial focus on improving the impact of the hospital’s quality program for sepsis care improvement. Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening complication of an infection, resulting in 750,000 deaths in the United States and more than $20 billion in aggregate costs annually, with studies demonstrating that hospitals spend approximately $34,000 caring for each patient with severe sepsis. . . .

Now you know. I might also observe that this is the "software push" -- to help drive appropriate use of the Cubist-acquired (Cubicin® -- now also available in generic form) line of antibiotics, into wider use, inside providers across the nation.

Note: blog coverage will become spotty starting this evening, and lasting through the weekend, as I make airport runs around 6 PM EST. Onward.

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