PINC AI™ Applied Sciences Named Blazer Winner in 2024 Charlotte Inno’s Fire Awards Program

Premier, Inc.’s PINC AI™ Applied Sciences (PAS) has been named the Blazer winner of the 2024 Charlotte Inno Fire Awards in the Health Care category, a program honoring the people, companies and organizations that keep the Charlotte area’s innovation ecosystem going. The Fire Awards celebrate the startup, tech-focused and innovative achievements of the previous year across a variety of industries.

For 2023, PAS was recognized for their work in advancing health equity and access to care for diverse patient populations across the U.S. Health equity and disparities in care remain pervasive issues in our country, taking a toll not only on the health and well-being of racial and ethnic minorities and other underserved populations, but also on the U.S. economy. Consider these facts:

• A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals African Americans and other minorities have high mortality rates in heart disease and cancer.
• In clinical trials, Black Americans are severely underrepresented versus white Americans (5 percent versus 15 percent), LatinX Americans are slightly underrepresented versus white Americans (7 percent versus 8 percent) and less than 5 percent of American adults with cancer take part in clinical trials.
• CDC data show that Black women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, with most of the maternal deaths being preventable.
• According to one analysis, healthcare inequities have a staggering economic impact: ≈$320 billion. That number could eclipse $1 trillion in annual spending by 2040 if healthcare inequality remains unaddressed.

The PAS team is on the forefront of addressing these issues – and on fire when it comes to advancing health equity in the U.S. Here are some examples of how they, working together with their partners, are leading the charge to eliminate disparities in care.

• Developing strategic collaborations to help inform and support health equity for all populations. PAS created the Healthcare Innovators Collaborative (HIC), which brings health systems and life sciences organizations together to support collective efforts to advance health equity. In May 2023, the inaugural Health Equity Executive Exchange convened to explore the data needed to drive action, work collaboratively to build health and economic wellness in communities across the nation, and share tips on how to scale health equity efforts exponentially. The PAS HIC continues to focus on understanding the diverse needs of populations, advance research and develop technology-enabled tools to help health systems better prepare and improve their processes for managing and treating patient populations that experience inequities.

• Pioneering innovation at the local level to drive sustainable health equity solutions. PAS, along with their partners Henry Ford Health, Henry Ford Innovations, community organizations, patient advocacy groups and life sciences organizations, came together in September 2023 in Detroit with a shared commitment to advance cancer care, aiming to ensure equitable screening, diagnosis and treatment of cancer for the city’s historically marginalized and underserved communities. The collective team connected with the local community, engaged in conversations with those affected by inequities and worked together to facilitate creative, innovative solutions to address barriers to care. PAS continues to guide communities in unearthing their own solutions to the health equity crisis, underscoring the fact that this event isn’t just a moment in time; it’s a catalyst for lasting change.

• Increasing diversity and equity in clinical trials. PAS is utilizing the power and speed of AI-driven natural language processing (NLP) to help create opportunities for studies in the communities where underserved patients live and then identifying barriers to enrollment and informing strategies to reach these populations. PAS’ NLP technology works to select data sets that capture race, ethnicity, gender and age as well as non-insured patients, which are essential for diversifying clinical trials. Additionally, by combing through unstructured data and clinicians’ narrative notes in patient charts, NLP – which can read and interpret more than 2 million records per hour – can uncover disparities like transportation issues, food insecurities and housing conditions that negatively impact the ability to find the right patients for the right trials and help them successfully take part.

• Making healthcare safe and equitable for all mothers and babies. Premier and the PAS team are focused on efforts aimed at reducing maternal mortality and morbidity that disproportionately impact Black mothers and families, including the PINC AI™ Perinatal Improvement Collaborative (PPIC). Under the leadership of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office on Women’s Health (OWH), the PPIC includes more than 220 hospital systems in all 50 states using performance improvement tools and standardized, gold-standard data from the PHD, powered by PAS, to measure outcomes for both mothers and babies to help paint a clearer picture of what is driving deaths and harm and inform HHS’ national insights. At its core, the PPIC is a health equity effort that helps address the factors that impact maternal and infant health outcomes from racial, ethnic, social and geographic disparities to examine how care could be tailored to mothers with different needs.

We’re proud of our work and the advancements we’re making to help close the gaps in disparities of care and leading the nation in accelerating healthcare improvement through research, actionable data, services and scalable solutions. And we’re proud to be named the Blazer winner of the 2024 Charlotte Inno Fire Awards in the Health Care category.

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