Optum Inc
Optum: Robust Platform for Redefining Life Sciences and Healthcare

Healthcare arena is evolving at breakneck speed with innumerable institutions incorporating real-time analytics and business intelligence into their solution stack. This emerging trend is steering the technology to proffer rich benefits including accurate diagnosis, preventive medicine, and personalized care. Optum, a San Francisco, CA, based firm works diligently to cater these merits through their range of analytics solutions and services that improves performance and help craft better decisions.

The company empowers modern healthcare by combining data and analytics with technology and expertise. “Our deep understanding about diverse needs of healthcare participants enable us to deliver collaborative solutions that provide insights for building sustainable health communities,” says Larry Renfro, CEO, Optum. Furthermore, the company’s ability to successfully headway and fulfill the current market requisites lets them to gain ground and deliver productive solutions. Delving more on the present scenario, Renfro throws light on an emerging trend where need for concrete data and medical evidence has grown with the health care systems drifting from volume-based business to value-based business. “Traditionally it takes life sciences institutions considerable time to analyze these assets and arrive at actionable insights. Subsequently, products get delayed to market and competitive advantage is lost as well,” explains Renfro.

Alleviating this scenario, Optum collaborates with SAS to create—SAS RWD analytics platform—a cloud-based data analytics solution that shortens the time from insight to action for a broad range of stakeholders. This service facilitates life sciences companies to quickly perform research on de-identified integrated claims and clinical data thereby allowing them to better understand patient care and successfully demonstrate the effectiveness, safety and value of drug therapies. “The insights proffered by the platform is a result of unique blend between our vast clinical data assets and SAS analytical tools,” says Renfro. All along, the capability of the solution to offer comprehensive clinical electronic health records with a user-friendly interface and a unified, scalable analytics toolset boosts up its user friendliness.

The insights proffered by the platform is a result of unique blend between our vast clinical data assets and SAS analytical tools

Besides delivering data-agnostic platform, Optum helps prevent healthcare fraud, waste and abuse by offering comprehensive set of anti-fraud services. “According to National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA), activities such as billing for unperformed medical services, paying for a medically unnecessary test and expensive bills account to loss of $60 billion annually,” says Renfro. While, the health plans find it exigent to assemble the complex combination of technology and talent required to mount sophisticated anti-fraud defense, the company offers an absolutely viable solution. Optum’s anti fraud services—which capitalizes SAS’s Fraud Framework — enables identifying and preventing instances of deceit for payers. “Our pragmatic solution combines detection, investigation, prevention, case development and recovery services to provide commercial health plans with a flexible approach for ensuring proper payments to care providers,” says Renfro.

Maintaining a deep commitment towards customers and associates’ relationship, Optum will continue to infuse progressive technology trends into their solutions. With such a goal, the company endures to engage deeply with SAS to maximize the value-transfer for clients. “We see the healthcare market, in all its permutations as a key growth space in which we are attaining considerable traction,” says Renfro. “Moreover, our long standing command with the ins and outs of this industry empowers us to craft best-in-class solutions for our clients.”