ViTAL Chats: Digital Health Series — Data in Healthcare
Welcome back to ViTAL Chats, my name is Thy Nguyen, the host for today’s podcast. I hope you had a chance to listen to our first two episodes of the Digital Health Speakers series. Today’s episode will conclude our series by discussing how data analytics can impact the healthcare field.
The future of healthcare is expected to be driven by digital transformation and data analysis. The events of 2020 have only accelerated that change. According to HealthsystemCIO, analytics solutions will be a top priority going into 2021, especially as health information systems seek to leverage Big Data to provide better care, prevent diseases, and optimize all areas of the care continuum. As we go into a new decade, let’s go over the basics of healthcare analytics: what it means and what it can do.
Healthcare analytics is the collection and analysis of data in the healthcare industry in order to gain insights and support decision-making. From key areas like medical costs, clinical data, patient behavior, and pharmaceuticals, healthcare analytics can be used on both macro and micro levels to effectively streamline operations, improve patient care, and lower overall costs.
As the industry continues to innovate and refine these tools, data-driven decisions will soon become standard, leading to more proactive, successful healthcare operations. It can impact the healthcare industry by providing guidelines for navigating a healthcare crisis. In the months since the virus has entered and spread throughout the US, entities from all sectors of the healthcare industry have moved quickly to leverage their big data assets and better understand how to respond to COVID-19. Recently, researchers from the University of Washington received a $33,000 grant to develop a model that uses local data to generate policy recommendations that could reduce the spread of COVID-19 in King County. The model will help decision-makers answer important questions related to coronavirus, including when and how to reopen businesses and schools, and how to distribute a vaccine when one becomes available. Once a vaccine becomes available, the researchers plan to expand the model to simulate vaccination rollout and coverage, and optimize for the best delivery configuration, such as vaccination priority if supply is limited. One of the speakers at our Digital Health event, Jessica Davis who also works on analysing the epidemic outcome data to help the policymakers make their decision. She is a Ph.D. student at the Network Science Institute and the Modeling of Biological + Socio-technical Systems Lab at Northeastern University. Her research includes processing data mathematically and transforming them into visually interpretable information that allows the public to learn the stories behind the data.
Along with the seismic shift away from volume care to value-based care, the implementation of data analytics provides new methods to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of health care practitioners at the point of delivery. As it continues to be better understood and implemented, this promises positive shifts in the patient experience and quality of care. The McKesson Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation, for example, continually evaluates the performance of health care practitioners by aggregating data from direct observation, complaints, practice patterns, patient outcomes and resource use. The data are compared alongside various performance measurements such as professionalism, patient care and interpersonal communication skills. Moreover, healthcare analytics can improve the quality of care. For example, Wellframe is a mobile platform that translates evidence-based, peer-reviewed guidelines and literature into an interactive daily checklist delivered to patients. Dr. Trishan Panch, the Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Wellframe, shared in our Digital Health Speaker event how Wellframe collects the data from the patients and utilizes it to enhance healthcare performance. As patients engage with the Wellframe app, their data is shared in real time with their care team through the care team dashboard, which utilizes advanced algorithms to generate early intervention alerts. With secure two-way messaging, Wellframe facilitates long-term, trusted relationships between patients and care teams.
Finally, data analytics can assist in preventing and diagnosing different diseases. A large percentage of what affects health outcomes is associated with factors outside the purview of traditional health care. These factors include patient health habits and behaviors, socio-economic factors like employment, education, and physical environment. In order to improve outcomes, the public health system must expand its boundaries to account for these ‘outside’ factors. In data analytics, these metrics can be modeled to predict risk of chronic disease. Moreover, analytics can model risk by accounting for the multiple medical conditions that a patient might have. In aggregating and analyzing all these forms of data, the healthcare industry can more effectively allocate resources, enabling it to intervene in high-risk populations early on and prevent long-term systemic costs. Day Zero Diagnostics, for example, is a biotech company that develops a new genome sequencing-based diagnostics to modernize infectious disease diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Nicole Billings, a speaker of our Digital Health speakers event, is the Director of Lab Services at Day Zero Diagnostics. She describes how the company’s technique works. They utilize the power of genome to build technologies that both precisely identify the species and provide the comprehensive antibiotic susceptibility profile of a bacterial infection within hours, rather than days, so that patients can be treated with the most effective antibiotic quickly. Faster treatment with the right antibiotic can reduce the cost and complications associated with extended episodes of care.
Data analytics is indeed a breakthrough in the healthcare field. With its unlimited capabilities, it promises to impact the healthcare system significantly in the future. We hope that this episode has taught you a little more about data analytics in healthcare and if you are interested in learning more, please watch the recording of our Digital Health Speaker Event on YouTube, where we brought in experts from the field.
Thank you for listening. To learn more about Vital and stay updated with our events, you can follow us on social media, @vitalnortheastern, and check for updates on our website, www.northeastern.edu/vital.
Listen to ViTAL Chats at: https://open.spotify.com/show/4DKEEZJ4q5wnGa62Of2RN5
