Patent ID: 8265954

Claim:
A computer system that extracts health care data from one or more health care payors to identify meaningful relationships or patterns in treatments to compare the effectiveness of various treatment of specific diseases, the computer system comprising: a computer configured to communicate with one or more payor computer systems from one or more payors over the Internet; wherein the payor computer systems are of a type that includes one or more databases storing records of the health care data; wherein a normalized format is of a type that displays health care data from one or more sources such that any health care data having the same meaning will be expressed in the same format despite any prior formatting; a staging database in communication with the computer; wherein the staging database is configured to receive the health care data from each of the payor computer systems; wherein the health care data from each of the payor computer systems is configured to be converted into the normalized format by a normalization system comprising: a rules engine that predetermines how each of the health care data is to appear in its respective field, and remodels any health care data not expressed as predetermined by the normalized format into the normalized format becoming normalized data such that all normalized data expressing information having the same meaning now expresses that meaning in the same format; and wherein the normalized data is made available to determine comparative effectiveness of various treatments of specific diseases.