FutureCare For The Information Generation With Predictive Analytics

By Roberta Katz, Director, EMC Healthcare Solutions

Our technology-driven world is dramatically changing how we consume information as part of the Information Generation. We are always connected, on more devices, and can quickly access data from across the world. When it comes to our own healthcare, we act as both patients and consumers of healthcare information.

And, there’s so much information to consume. Healthcare data is growing at 48 percent per year and, at the same time, the Quantified Self Movement is further accelerating the rate of change as wearables and mobile devices are being used for self-tracking and arming patients with even more data to make informed decisions on preventative health and disease management.

Today’s patients are asking for faster access to services, personalized experiences, 24/7 access and connectivity, and access on more devices, according to a recent Vanson Bourne study of 236 global healthcare leaders. In other words, healthcare at the “speed of now.”

With these demands from empowered patients come new challenges for healthcare providers across the value chain and impacts on the provider-patient relationship. To keep pace with this digital mindset, healthcare leaders have identified the following five top business imperatives they need to deliver against to stay ahead of the competition.

1. Predictively spot new opportunities — healthcare providers are hoping to realize cost savings from initiatives for population health, value-based care, and the patient-centered medical home.
2. Demonstrate transparency and trust — patients are asking for greater access to secure medical records and want to understand their treatment options and success rates.
3. Innovate in an agile way — providers are looking to build new revenue streams from clinical research, clinical integration, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
4. Deliver unique, personalized experiences — to further enhance patient engagement, providers are becoming meaningful users of EMR to gain a 360° patient view and incorporate data coming from wearables and genomics for precision medicine.
5. Be always-on, operating in real-time — providers are expanding their care team’s reach with virtual care programs for telemedicine, mHealth, and medical adherence.

Just imagine the critical role these business imperatives play in a healthcare environment for 2016-17 hospital purchasing plans. Yet today, many healthcare organizations are only in the early stages of addressing these business attributes extremely well or enterprise-wide.

The good news? These challenges bring new opportunities for healthcare organizations to modernize their IT infrastructure — using Big Data analytics to propel data-driven decisions at the point-of-care, improve operational efficiencies, and accelerate care collaboration. Harnessing the value of predictive analytics can also help organizations turn their focus from patient episodes to the overall patient lifecycle. In this case, expanding the healthcare network with innovative ambulatory and outpatient care models can improve patient engagement, loyalty, and revenue streams.

But there is more work to be done. The Vanson Bourne research shows healthcare leaders ranked Big Data analytics as the number one technology trend that will impact the delivery of healthcare tomorrow. And, while the vast majority of respondents to the 27^th Annual HIMSS Leadership survey viewed health IT as a strategically critical tool to help their healthcare organization be successful, the prior year’s responses found 81 percent of healthcare leaders still have basic questions around the quantity and type of data they should be collecting and how to best turn that data into insight.

This number is not surprising given that legacy IT infrastructures often lack the analytic capabilities to make timely and evidence-based interventions at the bedside since patient information is often dispersed across the health system. The future of care will depend on healthcare organizations making the journey to a modern data center that brings analytics, data, and applications together — transforming collected data into actionable insights to meet the needs of the Information Generation.

So, how can healthcare providers achieve accountable care objectives and effectively support the empowered patient?

The Predictive Analytics Diagnosis

To successfully provide care for the Information Generation patient, healthcare providers must further accelerate the continuous feedback process by evolving to the next-generation of analytics. For instance, to help reduce readmission rates, providers need to gain insights into a much broader set of data points that integrate the patient’s medical history, such as remote patient monitoring tools, likelihood they will follow discharge instructions, lifestyles, and demographic profiles, to significantly impact outcomes.

As healthcare organizations work to build a more modern and agile data analytics infrastructure, they are deploying predictive analytics to gain a holistic perspective as they find, curate, and govern data enabling continuous improvements in operational efficiencies, clinical outcomes, and patient engagement.

But will these greater investments in predictive analytics deliver the outcomes desired? The research says yes — healthcare providers that have successfully implemented predictive analytics see measurable results. In fact, 54 percent of health IT leaders who spent 1-5 percent of their operating budget on analytics reported success within financial and clinical management.

And there are also clear cost reductions associated with improved predictive analytics. A 2015 Goldman Sachs study projects the total savings opportunity from digital health initiatives to be upwards of $305 billion.

As healthcare organizations realize the unlocked potential of predictive analytics, provide a secure environment for organization stakeholders to interact with data points, and work to advance their data analytics strategy, EMC recommends a set of best practices to help ensure success:

1. develop a Big Data analytics vision and roadmap that is understood across the health system;
2. work with multidisciplinary team incorporating clinical departments, business analysts, and data science teams across the continuum to prioritize early use cases;
3. capture internal and trusted external data sources to minimize data silos;
4. execute a proof-of-value project that can make positive business and clinical impacts; and
5. align business, clinical, and IT requirements to optimize the infrastructure.

What we once thought was the future of healthcare is here now — and the complexities of caring for the Information Generation, improving patient outcomes, and achieving business goals requires health IT to become more proactive. Healthcare organizations must begin to deploy analytics at scale to meet these growing demands and shorten time-to-value as they make the transition to value-based care. And, using advanced analytics to achieve these objectives and provide next-generation care delivery will be the key differentiator among providers across the competitive healthcare landscape.