Data analytics is now helping the healthcare sector not just to improve hospital efficiency, but also to diagnostic and prognostic support.
Increasingly, Data analytics is optimizing process-oriented expenditures in the healthcare industry by integrating performance modelling with financial and predictive care monitoring. Factors that are driving the increase in the demand for analytics in healthcare include growth in healthcare expenditure and an increase in adoption of cloud analytics among several end users.
While data analytics can be of significant support, recognizing the quality of data and implementing analytics for health administration, the challenges show up in managing doctors and staff skills. It is not easy to change the traditional ways in which surgeons, anaesthesiologists, and medical staff has been operating until now. That is the real test of technology adoption.
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To convince the OR staff, it is essential to gather the accurate data that relates to their job profile essentials and can integrate into their workloads. To understand the crucial support that data analytics can provide, may be a challenge for them at first, but once the surgeons and staff see how it can make their job of saving lives easier, adoption will come easy.
Two instances of the increasing scope of data analytics in healthcare are:
Mission Health plans to save $5 million using data analytics
With its ‘Mission re:DESIGN,’ Mission Health’s goal was a radical redesign of clinical programs and processes so that they can provide the best possible care with zero harm. Mission prioritized surgery to leverage analytics. Mission Health knew that the 47 ORs generate the biggest revenue and data-driven insights for clinical and operational improvements. Mission implemented the Surgery Workflow Operations Dashboard and Late-Binding Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) platform.
After a quick implementation of EDW, it aggregated data from 6 data sources in just nine months and provided a single reference to guide improvement efforts. Insights from the OR-Dashboard enabled monitoring of doctor on-time arrival and readiness of OR equipment. This led to a dramatic improvement—20 percent to date in OR efficiency. The data preparation and reporting process also now requires half an FTE to maintain and accommodate -off report requests. Health Mission has anticipated saving of $5-7 million in its OR supply chain with the OR dashboard. Heading forward, the system plans to leverage advanced analytics to improve care in critical areas, including C-section, sepsis, heart failure, and newborn.
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Medicrea’s Spinal precision increases with data analytics
By using data and algorithms that take into consideration patients’ optimal sagittal alignment and compensatory mechanisms, Medicrea makes patient-specific rods that are industrially pre-bent to precisely match the optimal individual surgical simulation. This process preserved the rod’s full integrity and limited stress points that could lead to rod fracture after implanting into the patient.
Medicrea’s R&D efforts leveraged the intelligent pre-operative surgical planning to streamline inventory required for surgery and provide patient-specific devices. The first quarter of 2019 quarter has seen a 68% growth of the AI based surgeries using the UNiD ASI technology in the US. UNiD is a tool based on AI and analytics to assist surgeons to build precise surgical planning to improve patient outcomes. Till date 3700 patients have benefited from this technology and have received the UNID Patient Specific Rods.
Technology alone cannot fully drive improvement to meet quality goals. In a hospital environment, different employees and departments have a stake in OR’s limited resources, and to embrace the use of an analytical OR dashboard, all must be committed to data-driven decision-making.
With data analytics, there are security concerns over patient’s information, but this would increase the demand for skilled experts in healthcare analytics.
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Meeta Ramnani is the Senior Editor with OnDot Media. She writes about technologies including AI, IoT, Cloud, Big Data, Blockchain across various industries with a focus on Digital Transformation. An avid bike rider, Meeta, is a postgraduate from Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media (IIJNM) Bangalore, where her specialization was Business Journalism. She carries four years of experience in mainstream print media where she worked as a correspondent with The Times Group and Sakal Media Group in Pune.
