Empowering smarter healthcare decisions

Premier is on a mission to improve the health of communities across the U.S. by equipping healthcare organizations with actionable intelligence. Serving two-thirds of U.S. healthcare providers and capturing data on more than 45% of U.S. hospital discharges, Premier operates at a scale that demands continuous, cutting-edge innovation. Premier solutions not only empower healthcare systems to deliver better patient care but also support life sciences companies in advancing real-world evidence through clinical trials and research. 

To fulfill their mission, Premier leverages their customer-facing INsights platform and internal analytics capabilities to drive improvement across healthcare systems. The platform standardizes and integrates siloed data into an intuitive interface, allowing healthcare providers to improve both patient experience and population health and reduce the overall cost of care by identifying opportunities for improvement through risk adjustment using advanced data science techniques. As Tim Riddle, Senior Director of Enterprise Analytics at Premier explained, “INsights helps providers uncover actionable opportunities for better care by transforming complex data into meaningful benchmarks. For example, if a provider notices a certain drug isn’t being widely used in other hospitals, they can leverage the platform to understand why, explore potential risks and optimize their practices accordingly.”

Internally, Premier’s advisory experts use analytics tools to support healthcare organizations in identifying opportunities for improved outcomes and operational efficiencies. These advisors rely on robust analytics to provide tailored recommendations that help organizations achieve better margins and enhance patient care.

Dispersed data across applications made it difficult to extract meaningful insights and deploy a conversational interface. “Canned reports are boxed in,” noted Jay Sharma, Software Architect at Premier. “If you wanted to go outside the box, it involved lengthy manual processes or reliance on engineering. With limited SQL expertise among end users, it wasn’t feasible to explore data as freely as we needed.”

To unlock the full potential of their data, Premier turned to the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and AI/BI Genie.

AI/BI Genie provides a natural language interface that encourages users to interact with data intuitively, reducing reliance on technical expertise and accelerating time to insights. By allowing users to ask questions in plain English — as opposed to code — and receive instant insights, Genie simplifies complex queries and makes analytics accessible to a broader range of users. The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform enabled Premier to continue transforming their analytics operations — both internally and for healthcare providers via INsights. 

For example, an advisory expert can start with a question like, “What is the 30-day readmission rate for surgical site infections?” Genie can provide the answer immediately while also enabling deeper exploration, such as excluding specific patient cohorts or adjusting parameters. When more customization is needed, Genie supports users by generating SQL queries for them that can be refined further, ensuring flexibility and precision in analytics. “Genie gives users the freedom to color outside the box,” added Sharma. “It allows us to handle complex questions and seamlessly transition from natural language queries to SQL for deeper insights, all while reducing the burden on engineering.”

Premier’s deployment of Genie is bolstered by the broader capabilities of the Databricks Platform, ensuring a seamless and efficient analytics workflow. By organizing data with clear metadata and governance rules, Unity Catalog ensures that Genie delivers accurate and secure results. “Unity Catalog was like flipping a light switch for us. Years of effort in organizing and standardizing data became instantly useful, allowing us to expose clean, trusted insights efficiently,” said Riddle.

Delta Lake, the underlying technology, enhances data performance and integrity, providing a robust foundation for Genie operations. It allows Premier to efficiently store and process structured and unstructured data such as clinical notes. According to Sharma, “Delta Lake has streamlined our ETL processes. We’re gaining some performance improvements by having data readily available for analysis without bottlenecks.” As a key enabler for collaboration, Delta Sharing supports Premier’s partnerships with life sciences and pharmaceutical companies. Through secure data sharing, Premier can accelerate research initiatives and provide stakeholders with speed to value for actionable insights.

The integration of Genie with these supporting tools positions Premier to scale their analytics offerings across healthcare organizations. By combining Genie’s intuitive interface with robust data management capabilities, the Databricks Platform enables Premier to reduce silos, deliver insights faster and empower users at all levels to improve care outcomes.

As a relatively new adopter of the Databricks Platform, Premier has already seen measurable improvements in productivity, efficiency and data-driven decision-making. 

Premier has streamlined the process of transforming raw data into actionable insights. Genie’s natural language interface and SQL automation capabilities have significantly reduced the time and effort required to analyze complex datasets. In fact, Genie is 10x faster and more cost efficient than writing SQL manually.

Configuring Genie for production was another testament to its efficiency. Premier successfully deployed Genie in just three days, achieving a 100% success rate in generating accurate reports. Beyond productivity gains, Genie has helped ensure Premier’s data security and governance through Unity Catalog. This gives Premier continued confidence in their ability to handle sensitive healthcare data while delivering insights that help to improve customer outcomes.

Looking ahead, Premier is focused on expanding Genie’s capabilities and bringing its benefits to an even broader audience. Plans include continuously rolling out Genie to external healthcare systems and allowing them to use natural language queries for self-service analytics. This move will empower providers to uncover insights independently, reducing the need for technical expertise and fostering a more data-driven approach to healthcare improvement. “We’re excited about Genie’s potential to scale,” said Riddle. “As we incorporate additional features like row- and column-level security, Genie will become even more versatile and impactful, helping us deliver value to thousands of hospitals across the U.S.”

Premier is also exploring new use cases beyond clinical operations. By leveraging Genie’s flexibility, Premier aims to assist their healthcare customers with addressing operational challenges, such as resource allocation and supply chain optimization, further supporting their mission to improve care delivery. With Databricks AI/BI Genie as a cornerstone of their analytics strategy, Premier is well positioned to drive ongoing innovation and deliver measurable value to healthcare systems and providers. By continuing to invest in scalable, user-friendly solutions, Premier is enabling better, smarter and faster healthcare.