Growing Portland Collaborative Seeks to Build Maine-Based Health Informatics Hub

A recently released report has taken notice of an emerging strength in Onpoint’s home state of Maine: an expanding market niche in health informatics — “the use of data to inform and improve healthcare quality, cost, and risk decisions.” The report, titled “The Health Informatics Assessment Project” (HIAP), is aimed at highlighting the ongoing development of a deep talent pool of health informatics specialists in the state, with an immediate focus on the state’s largest city, Portland.

The Growing Portland collaborative, a public-private partnership supported by the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service, released the report last month after studying and researching the expertise, experience, and bandwidth of more than 50 participating healthcare organizations located in Maine — spanning higher education institutions, consulting businesses, hospitals, insurance agencies, and data management and analytics firms, including Onpoint Health Data.

The report’s findings suggest that bringing together Maine’s health informatics industry could place the state in a strategic position to attract additional talent, spur investments, and strengthen collaboration. The ultimate result: augmented capacity to access and interpret meaningful data, driving transformative, sustainable changes in healthcare systems across geographic boundaries.