There are more reasons than ever to be optimistic about the possibilities created by big data and predictive analytics in healthcare. By leveraging new technologies, including big data APM solutions like Pepperdata, healthcare organizations are able to make better medical and financial decisions while continually improving the quality of patient care. For instance, our customer, Clearsense, enables its healthcare customers to leverage analytics to save lives and improve patient outcomes.
The use cases made possible with big data and predictive analytics are truly visionary and life-saving. Here are some examples.
Saving Lives
- The U.S. government has instituted patient assessments for the risk of overdose and suicide, enabling the effective collaboration between medical and mental care providers serving veterans at risk of suicide (White House blog post).
- AI can solve the problem associated with the shortage of trained healthcare providers, which can significantly limit access to life-saving care in developing nations. According to an example cited in Health IT Analytics, “AI imaging tools can screen chest x-rays for signs of tuberculosis, often achieving a level of accuracy comparable to humans” making this capability available to providers in low-resource areas and reducing the need for an on-site specialist.
- UC Davis uses EHR data in an algorithm that gives clinicians an early warning about sepsis, which has a 40 percent mortality rate and is difficult to detect until it’s too late.
Improving Outcomes
- According to Science Direct, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center utilized analytics to identify areas of emergency room (ER) deficiency and uncover ways to improve performance. By collecting and analyzing data on the length of stay for patients (efficiency) and the percentage of patients leaving without treatment (effectiveness), the organization implemented new programs to improve outcomes, including segmenting lower severity patients and establishing an internal waiting room.
- The Health Workforce Mapper tool from the American Medical Association (AMA) offers reliable data from AMA, CMS, and the CDC, enabling users to identify workforce-related trends and understand which socioeconomic factors significantly impact patients’ access to healthcare.
Personalizing Care
- Pharmaceutical companies are collecting data via wearable devices and developing educational apps to provide more holistic and personalized care to patients.
- There has also been an increase in the use of community social media platforms, where members share data with each other and with care givers about drug side effects and patient interactions.
Lowering Costs
- Organizations spend billions every year on unplanned hospital readmissions, which are largely avoidable. Using patient data, hospitals can uncover factors that raise the risk of readmission and design preventive measures to avoid these costly occurrences, such as implementing nutrition interventions and educational programs to improve patient outcomes.
- In one study published in American Health and Drug Benefits, a nutrition-focused quality improvement program led to a reduction in 30-day hospital readmissions and length of stay, resulting in significant per-patient net savings.
Managing Population Health
- Community and social traits, such as average incomes, local healthy food choices, violence rates, access to transportation, unemployment rates, and education levels can all be important predictors of patient outcomes.
- Socioeconomic data and information are rich resources for improving population health. Using data collected directly from patients or through public health resources, healthcare organizations can develop effective population health management programs that address the full spectrum of patients’ needs.
While big data can be difficult to manage and process, it will undoubtedly continue to transform the healthcare industry in a positive way. By leveraging new technologies, including Pepperdata, healthcare organizations are gleaning highly useful and actionable information and enabling caregivers and administrators to make better medical and financial decisions while delivering an ever-increasing quality of patient care.
Register for our webinar to learn how Clearsense enables healthcare organizations to consolidate, access and visualize data to save lives, improve patient outcomes, reduce costs, and avoid waste.