The Evolution of Healthcare Data Analytics
Currently, there is great interest in the topic of healthcare among the general public (after all, this is a basic human need), and even a growing recognition of the role that data analysis can play in this space. This is evidenced by all the big tech companies wanting to get in on the act. But it wasn’t always this way.
Early 2000s: When Data Analytics Started Getting Real
Back when I graduated from college in the mid-90s, there was no such thing as a university degree in “Healthcare Informatics” or “Health Data Science.” I’m pretty sure there wasn’t even any undergrad or grad school program called “Data Science.” In order to get a solid grounding in skills that would come in handy to get a job after graduation, you had to either major in a hard STEM discipline needing math and statistics, or in one of the social sciences with a quantitative component to it, like economics. Hopefully, you also had some kind of computer programming requirement and were able to learn how to use software such as Matlab and SAS.
Thus, when I switched from finance to healthcare in 2001, my title was Statistician. There just wasn’t any job called Data Analyst or Data Scientist at the time. It was all basic…
