Importance of Data in Healthcare Industry

Yasir Sulaiman
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

This article can be started on a lighter note. Visualize your life before two decades and come back to the present. You will see a huge difference. The context is similar to being transported to another dimension as illustrated in the Hollywood film “Avatar”- 2009. The comparison will also suit the technological transformation that is being witnessed in the healthcare industry. Everything has got automated! No longer do loads of printed archives or waiting in line to meet a doctor exist. A system organizes all these as well as schedules appointments accordingly.

Yet, the focus on number of patients and the rise in ailments across the world has compelled everyone to forget a crucial element that can assist in the discovery of medical cures as well as in the improvisation of healthcare technology. The loads of data related to patients and medical drugs utilized in a particular hospital since its commencement are precious.

The immense amount of data generated by individual patients is already getting tough to handle. With the potential of wearable technologies and the growing trend of consumers tracking their own health information, this surge of big data in healthcare requires to be utilized well.

Wondering how? Consider this scenario. A male patient in his late thirties is visiting a hospital as he suffered a mild chest pain along with discomfort in his left wrist. The hospital will record his name, age, gender, previous health ailments if any, his current levels of sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure along with his weight. Besides, his profession, place of working and place of residence will also be filed.

Treasure of information in healthcare data

Imagine the data that can be generated in such a manner from varied patients visiting a hospital in a single day. Statistics can be generated on each person’s expected health for a particular age limit, residing in a particular location and belonging to particular profession. This data can be utilized to find the major cause of ailments and the cures for the same.

Clinical data hold the potential to help transform the healthcare system. By providing greater insight to patients, providers, and policy makers into the appropriate application of interventions, and quality and costs of care, these data offer the opportunity to accelerate progress on the six dimensions of quality care: safety, effectiveness, patient centeredness, timely, efficiency, and equitability.

Understanding the scale of this potential and of the missed opportunities requires an overview of existing healthcare data — the sources, types, accessibility, and uses. However, the assistance of customized software applications and big data analytics are required to maintain accuracy. Some methods in which software can assist in the storage and utilization of healthcare data are:

1. Self-Aggregation:

This can be conducted to measure and report on physician performance in a more meaningful and transparent way — creating reports on performance at the physician network, medical group, practice site, and individual physician level, for both doctors and consumers. The development of a unique enterprise data warehouses specific to each hospital is the solution for this. Such databases can assist in the generation and collection of enormous amounts of healthcare data. Systems can collect clinical data, financial data, staffing data, human resources data, supply chain information, and research data among others.

However, such Healthcare Enterprise Development Warehouses (EDW) need to be designed to flexibly support the various analytic needs of unique healthcare systems. There are two approaches to design such warehouses namely the Enterprise Data Model and the Independent Data Mart approach. Healthcare organizations should select the approach that suits their own system the most.

2. Wearable Technology:

It is often wrongly assumed that healthcare data is only generated from hospital records and computer systems. Wearable technology also provides comprehensive, out-of-hospital patient insights that are necessary to boost the effectiveness of a value-based care system to function efficiently and effectively. For example, patient-generated health data provides medical practitioners valuable routine and lifestyle insights such as durations of sleep, blood pressure, heart rate, weight and activity levels.

Yet, the effectiveness of wearable technology devices and their related applications would depend a lot on the designing algorithms. The data collected live from the person such a device should automatically be synchronized with the central healthcare data warehouse within the tiniest fraction of seconds. This is necessary to maintain accuracy of the data.

Conclusion:

Healthcare and medical aid have been redefined in the past decade with more importance given to automated technology, Big Data Analytics and user-friendly software applications. SGS Technologie is a database management and software development firm headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. Healthcare organizations across the United States are recommended to approach SGS Technologie to ensure that their patients receive the best of healthcare as well as advanced technological innovations.

Yasir Sulaiman

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