The Big Data revolution continues to make inroads into the healthcare space, where it’s helping reduce hospital readmissions, improve point-of-care decisions and advance research, among other benefits. Take a look at this sampling of topics on offer at the 2013 Annual HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans, La. last month: “Using Data Analytics to Improve Patient Care and Safety,” “Data Warehousing for Healthcare,” “Extracting Value from Healthcare Big Data with Predictive Analytics,” “Leveraging Data as an Asset.”
Clearly, Big Data is making its mark in the healthcare world, as it is in just about every other aspect of our world—a reality that’s compellingly illustrated in the recent Cisco-sponsored project, The Human Face of Big Data (HFOBD). Consisting of a book and an iPad app, the project is designed to illustrate how data transforms the way we perceive ourselves and our world.
The project’s premise? That real-time visualization of data streaming in from billions of sensors, RFID tags and GPS-enabled cameras and smart phones is beginning to allow us, as individuals and collectively as a society, to sense, measure and understand aspects of our existence in ways never before possible through data in motion or at rest. This is a big deal. In fact, many data experts believe this global ebb and flow of data—a planetary nervous system, if you will—will soon have a greater impact on our lives than the Internet.
Back in the world of healthcare, consider this example from HFOBD of how one doctor used the power of data to gain insight into hospital and emergency room visits. Troubled by the soaring costs of healthcare in America, Dr. Jeffrey Brenner of Camden, NJ, used the records of 600,000 hospital visits to build a map linking hospital claims to patients’ addresses. Analyzing the data, he made a startling discovery—that just 1 percent of patients accounted for 30 percent of hospital bills due to repeated emergency room visits.
To help address the issue, Brenner founded the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, which can dispatch caseworkers to care for the patients with the most problems. Once caseworkers began making proactive home visits and encouraging high-risk patients to stay on their medications, the target group’s hospital bills fell dramatically. In one instance, a single patient who had run up over US$700,000 in hospital bills in 12 months didn’t need another visit after the coalition’s intervention[1].
Continue reading “Data in Motion: An Opportunity for Healthcare Providers”
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