OSF HealthCare is turning to researchers for improved insights as it strives to make sure care teams know patients better to prevent health challenges and to manage their chronic diseases.

A recent Connected Communities Initiative (CCI) grant of up to $75,000 will support research to improve health care outcomes by incorporating social drivers of health (SDoH) data into predictive models. Social drivers of health are non-medical factors that have a big impact on a person’s health and wellness. Those can include a person’s financial constraints, housing, transportation, childcare and access to fresh food, among others.

Those needs can often be revealed by where a person lives. For example, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has tied ZIP codes to data showing a person’s life expectancy by neighborhood.

By integrating SDoH factors with information from traditional patient records, the project seeks to develop more accurate predictive models for 30-day hospital readmission and health care costs. Led by a collaborative team of data science experts and health care professionals, the research involves exploring SDoH data features, enriching already existing predictive models, and fine-tuning them for better accuracy.

Chris Franciskovich, vice president for Advanced Analytics, OSF Innovation, stressed, “The goal is to provide actionable insights and develop advanced predictive models to transform health care decision-making and resource allocation. Ultimately, this initiative should benefit patients, health care providers and insurance providers while contributing to advancements in health care technology and practices.”

Illinois State University co-lead researcher professor Maochao Xu, who directs the master’s program in the Mathematics Department, is excited to bring his expertise in statistical modeling to help patients and health systems. Graduate students will also contribute to the work, something Xu thinks is important as the role of artificial intelligence and predictive modeling will have growing applications in health care.

“We have three faculty members working on this who have great experience and can help students develop expertise in dating mining, statistical analysis and building and optimizing predictive models so they’ll help future generations better take care of patients.”

The CCI program is a partnership between OSF HealthCare and Illinois State University. The funding supports research involving clinicians, engineers and social scientists to rapidly develop technologies and devices that could revolutionize medical training and health care delivery.

The program is a formalization of the partnership between these two anchor institutions in Bloomington-Normal and the broader OSF HealthCare system. Illinois State and OSF HealthCare are lead hub members of the Illinois Innovation Network (IIN). The collaborative work in the Connected Communities Initiative has the potential to generate intellectual property that the two institutions can share and advance the IIN mission of driving inclusive and integrated research, innovation, and economic development across the state.

The agreement also provides a financial foundation for the work with both organizations providing $500,000 each, to contribute a total of $1 million annually for research and development of strategic solutions to improve health care delivery, and patient and provider experience.

“We believe expanding academic collaborations can help us create innovative solutions and new care models that provide more access, particularly to underserved populations,” said CEO of OSF HealthCare Bob Sehring.

“Working with OSF HealthCare on the CCI Program reflects Illinois State’s core values of Collaboration, Learning and Scholarship, and Civic Engagement,” said Illinois State Interim President Aondover Tarhule. “This partnership will provide many opportunities for Illinois State faculty and students to work with our partners at OSF on a wide range of innovative projects that address real-world needs. This is truly an exciting project that will have wide-ranging benefits for all involved.”

The partnership will initially build on Illinois State’s expertise in education, health, cybersecurity, biomedical science, visualization, and process improvement. There will be opportunities for Illinois State’s academic colleges to collaborate on projects with OSF Healthcare. The broad range of faculty expertise and the engagement from the student body will lead to exciting new solutions to complex problems facing society.

“There is a long tradition of partnership between OSF and Illinois State, perhaps most clearly with students in clinical placements and in clinical situations,” said Craig C. McLauchlan, PhD, Illinois State’s associate vice president for Research and Graduate Studies. “The CCI expands that relationship in the area of research and provides an institutional framework that will allow us to build on already existing collaborations more easily. The partnership will provide students and persons in our community opportunities to contribute to innovation and growth that will benefit many.”

OSF Healthcare and Illinois State University have a tradition of collaboration on research, including a recent project to improve low childhood vaccination rates. 

Joint projects can include testing solutions in clinical spaces, such as OSF HealthCare St. Joseph Medical Center and medical offices. The efforts will take place both virtually and in-person in a variety of settings including ISU labs and computer centers, along with Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center in Peoria, a world-class building with labs focused on advanced imaging and modeling, blockchain, children’s innovation, genomics and precision medicine, interprofessional education, neuro health, and STEAM.

“For OSF HealthCare, the expanded partnership will support the needs of researchers, medical educators, clinicians and most importantly, patients,” added John Vozenilek, MD, vice president and chief medical officer, OSF Innovation and Digital Health. “The brightest minds at Illinois State University can help us develop novel solutions with enhanced security and business processes to improve patient care and health outcomes, along with optimizing the use of resources using data.” Vozenilek adds, “That will become increasingly important as care continues to move from hospital settings to home and as we expand access to patients across all of the regions OSF serves.”

The CCI is built upon successful models that OSF Healthcare has developed and maintains with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois-Chicago, and Bradley University.

Video clips with Bob Sehring, Dr. John Vozenilek, Lynn Fulton, Aondover Tarhule, and Craig McLauchlan

B-roll from OSF-ISU partnership announcement