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OSF Ventures Makes Big Investment in Big Data

OSF’s venture capital arm is investing in a new healthcare data company. 

OSF and four other organizations are putting $7.3 million into Socially Determined. The company’s cloud-based data storage network includes government and commercial data, with the hopes that health providers and insurers can combine it with their own data to better serve patients who might face barriers to access.

WCBU spoke to Dr. Sarah Stewart de Ramirez, OSF’s vice president and chief medical officer for clinical innovation, about how such a system might be used back in August.

“Any time we touch a patient, whether they come to us in the ED, coming to us in a primary care office, or now coming to us virtually, we want to be able to look at where we know that they live and look at the social determinant conversations we should start to be having with our patients," she said. 

She says the hope with shared data is to eventually be able to identify potential health issues and intervene before they become a crisis.

Other backers of Socially Determined include 3M, LRVHealth, ProMedica, and Zeigler Link-Age Funds.

Copyright 2021 WCBU. To see more, visit WCBU.

Tim Shelley is the Assignment Editor and Digital Director at WCBU Peoria Public Radio.