Healthcare: Is it geared for the next big wave of information?

Dinkar Adlakha, VP – Govt & PSU, EMC India highlights how data analytics will play a vital role in healthcare in the years to come

The healthcare industry is changing – fast. The 2015 HIMSS Leadership Survey found that while 41 per cent of healthcare leaders think big data analytics is a number one priority for their organisation, a surprising 81 per cent still have basic questions around the quantity and type of data they should be collecting and how to actually turn that data into insight. That’s not especially good news considering healthcare data continues to grow at 48 per cent per year through 2020 from clinical applications, Internet-enabled medical devices, wearables, and remote patient monitoring. With questions on how to manage all of the data being generated today, how will healthcare providers collect, secure, and share the next big wave of information to come?

Making a splash with predictive analytics

Consider the key role predictive analytics play as hospitals work to reduce their 30-day re-admissions rates for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure (HF), and pneumonia (PN). To meet these requirements, healthcare providers must speed up the continuous feedback process using analytics across the continuum of care, including inputs from patient monitoring located in the home.

Healthcare providers that have successfully implemented predictive analytics see measurable results – 54 per cent of health IT leaders who spent 1-5 per cent of their operating budget on analytics reported success within financial and clinical management. Advanced predictive analytics also provide organisations with clear cost reductions.

Eye on Data Lake Horizon

A data lake provides massive scalability and multi-protocol data-in-place analytics, along with the enterprise data protection and security required by healthcare organisations. It provides a powerful data architecture with a unified location to help reduce silos across the healthcare enterprise. Data can also be connected from trusted outside sources including payers, genomic research centers, public health databases, biobanks, and social media feeds. Clinical departments, business analysts, and data science teams can conduct effective cross-data analysis as all internal data sources and trusted external sources are incorporated. Healthcare providers can further advance accountable care initiatives, creating a new realm of data
science for uncovering trends, patterns, relationships, correlations, and discoveries that can impact integrated patient care.

Making public health a shared value

For a holistic approach to the betterment of healthcare industry in the country, it is also imperative for IT sector to develop solutions that curate and integrate all medical records of patients. The applications that are being developed today are more inclusive and robust storage capabilities in the backend. One such example is LifeCare healthcare solution that is developed by EMC for the Andhra Government deployed in Vishakhapatnam. With time, it is becoming more and more important to take on a stronger app strategy that state governments also have to be an active part of. With that, public health becomes a shared value between all stakeholders.

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