FDB (First Databank Inc.), a provider of drug and medical device knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions, has launched a new medical device knowledge platform, FDB Prizm. The platform—comprised of a structured and categorized medical device knowledge base made available via web service APIs—enables actionable insight on medical devices within healthcare information systems to help improve clinical, operational, and financial outcomes.
 
The adoption of accountable care and value-based payment models challenges providers to cut costs while providing the best quality care and outcomes. Medical device information needs to be structured, complete, and readily available to enable providers to deliver value. Currently, medical device information within information systems is unstructured, incomplete, and in many cases unavailable, even though users of these systems need to rely on it to purchase, manage and bill for these products. The unique device identifier (UDI) is an important step that enables providers to track device safety and efficacy, but in reality, the marketplace requires a more comprehensive source for medical device information that goes beyond the UDI with high-quality, accurate, and structured knowledge.
 
FDB Prizm delivers valuable medical device knowledge that supports intelligent decisions and drives efficient management, documentation, billing and monitoring of medical device products, helping healthcare organizations to reduce costs, and enhance supply chain operations and clinical quality. It supports standardization and categorization of products for functional equivalence, as well as provides descriptive, clinical and economic attributes and codes.
 
“Until now, there has never been a comprehensive, organized and objective source of truth of medical device information for healthcare clinical and business decision makers,” said Chuck Tuchinda, M.D., MBA, president of FDB. “Our goal is for FDB Prizm to be as effective and useful as our current drug knowledge is within information systems, thus enabling clients to make more precise supply chain and clinical decisions for medical devices. Our FDB team will rigorously apply the nearly four decades of expertise we have gained in collecting, standardizing and publishing medication knowledge to provide the same depth and quality of knowledge for the medical device industry.”
 
Medical device knowledge in FDB Prizm covers products that are implanted in patients such as hip replacements, pacemakers, and stents; surgical instruments and medical supplies such as catheters, forceps, gloves, gauze and syringes; hospital and durable medical equipment such as imaging systems, patient monitors, wheelchairs, and diabetic supplies.
 
The content comes from a variety of sources including medical device manufacturers, industry data pools, providers, and government agencies and includes identifying information as well as clinical, operational, and financial attributes and codes. FDB’s experienced knowledge engineers take this vast amount of disparate data pertaining to more than six million medical devices and apply standardization and validation processes that have been proven for decades in medication knowledge management.
 
The FDB Prizm medical device knowledge is made available to users through web service APIs to ensure fast and up-to-date access to the information. This significantly reduces the device library maintenance burden for customers and ensures that users have the latest information without disruption to their workflow.
 
With thousands of customers worldwide, FDB enables its information system developer partners to deliver valuable, useful, and differentiated solutions. The San Francisco, Calif.-based company has more than three decades of experience transforming medical knowledge into actionable, targeted, and effective solutions that help improve patient safety, operational efficiency, and healthcare outcomes.
 
The Hearst Health network includes First Databank, Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase, MedHOK, Hearst Health International, Hearst Health Ventures and the Hearst Health Innovation Lab.