How Premier Uses Databricks AI/BI Genie to Give Healthcare Providers 10× Faster Analytics

Premier operates at a scale that touches most of the US healthcare system: two-thirds of providers, data on more than 45% of hospital discharges, and a customer-facing analytics platform called INsights that helps healthcare organisations benchmark care quality, manage costs, and identify opportunities for improvement. Premier's advisory experts use the same analytics infrastructure to give healthcare systems tailored recommendations on outcomes and operational efficiencies.

The problem was access. Premier's data was dispersed across applications, and turning it into insights required either pre-built dashboards — which were constrained and inflexible — or manual engineering work. 'Canned reports are boxed in,' said 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.' A question like 'What is the 30-day readmission rate for surgical site infections for patients who received this drug?' required a ticket, an analyst, and a wait.

Premier deployed Databricks AI/BI Genie on top of its existing Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. Genie provides a natural language interface: users ask questions in plain English and receive instant answers, with the ability to drill deeper, exclude cohorts, adjust parameters, or have Genie generate the SQL for further customisation. The integration with Unity Catalog — which Premier's Senior Director of Enterprise Analytics Tim Riddle described as 'like flipping a light switch' — meant years of data organisation and governance work immediately became accessible through the conversational layer. Delta Lake provides the underlying data integrity and ETL performance, and Delta Sharing enables Premier's partnerships with life sciences and pharmaceutical companies by securely surfacing the same high-quality data to external research stakeholders.

The results: SQL creation is 10× faster than manual coding. Premier configured Genie for production in 3 days. Business users now achieve 100% success in generating accurate reports without engineering involvement. Advisory experts can start from a natural language question and transition seamlessly to refined SQL when customisation is needed — without submitting a ticket or waiting for an analyst cycle.

Premier's deployment serves both internal advisory teams and the healthcare provider organisations using INsights, making the same step-change in data accessibility available to clinicians and administrators across the two-thirds of the US hospital system Premier serves.