In many areas of disease, detection and early intervention are key tools in lessening the burden of disease and improving health outcomes for patients.

The same approach is proving true at the population health level where identifying patients with chronic illnesses who are likely to become high-risk utilizers of medical services early on in their disease course and enrolling them in integrated care management programs has been shown to improve outcomes and reduce costs.

These strategies have also shown tremendous commercial value, says Trung Do, Vice President for Business Development (BD) at Partners Innovation.

For the past four years, the team at Partners Population Health Management (PHM) has been collaborating with Health Catalyst to develop care management solutions and analytical tools that can be used to mine healthcare systems for high-risk patients that could be brought into integrated care management programs.

That partnership culminated in an initial public offering on July 25 in which Health Catalyst raised $182 million in the offering and PHS’ equity ownership amounts to approximately $40 million.

“Certainly, that’s a great success for everyone, and a lot of that can be attributed to that relationship over the past four years,” says Do.

The BD team led the negotiations for the initial Enterprise Data Warehouse deal with Health Catalyst in 2013 and has remained involved in managing the relationship. The deal included an investment from Partners into Health Catalyst’s series B funding.

In 2015, the BD team negotiated a deal to license the PHS Population Health Management IP portfolio (which includes high-risk care management, ACO analytics and physician variation analysis) and establish a co-development collaboration to further develop products/services in related fields. The over $30 million deal included significant equity ownership for PHS and milestone and royalty payments.

While the reduction in healthcare costs and commercialization of these strategies are providing financial returns for PHS, perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the program is the benefits it provides to patients.

“Over the course of Health Catalyst’s development as a company during the past 11 years, we’ve had the opportunity to work with thousands of leaders across the healthcare delivery ecosystem.  We’ve also structured and negotiated hundreds of agreements and partnerships.  From among these many relationships and experiences, there are none that have been more impactful to Health Catalyst than the relationship with Partners HealthCare as an organization,” says Dan Burton, CEO of HealthCatalyst.

“Further, there have been few individuals that have made as profound and positive an impact on our company as Partners HealthCare’s leaders have made.  Current and former leaders including have enabled our growth and development in remarkable ways.  We have become a much better company and a much more capable analytics and population health partner across our client base, through our relationship with Partners HealthCare. And we look forward to continued innovation and deep partnership in the months and years ahead.”

“At the end of the day, it is an approach that better manages and coordinates patient care and hopefully improves outcomes and lowers costs,” says Do.