Healthcare analytics is the process of aggregating and evaluating current and historical industry data to predict trends, improve outreach, and better manage business practices and the spread of diseases. Analytics in healthcare is making a significant difference in today’s treatments and facility management.
Benefits of Healthcare Analytics
The healthcare industry has generated large amounts of data, driven by record keeping, compliance and regulatory requirements, and patient care. Historically, data was stored in hard copy form, but many healthcare organizations are becoming more efficient and effective through incorporating software and technology.
Healthcare analytics derives insights at both the macro and micro levels for systemic wastes of resources. Analytics track individual practitioner performance, record the health of populations and identify the risk of chronic diseases. With all this information, health systems can efficiently allocate resources to maximize population health, revenue, and patient care.
History of Healthcare Analytics
Traditionally, health records were written on paper, maintained in folders divided into sections based on the type of note, and only one copy was available. Technological innovations, such as the computer, led to new health information approaches starting in the 1960s and laid the foundation for developing the Electronic Health Record (EHR).
The first EHR appeared in the 1960s, and by 1965, approximately 73 hospitals and clinical information projects and 28 efforts for the storage and retrieval of medical documents and other clinical information were underway, according to HIMSS. The adoption and effective use of EHRs not only enabled better documentation and file organization but shifted the format of health records, and thus changed health care.
In 1970, as computers became more accessible in academic research centers, there was a growing interest in developing Medical Diagnosis Decision Support Systems (MDDS). These systems are all-in-one computer programs that pinpoint medical diagnoses when patient information enters the system. Such developments, particularly in diagnosis decision support, have high complexity. While these efforts were novel at the time, they did not employ a formal knowledge model. Instead, they relied on the characteristics of the data. Therefore, it was difficult to generate a clear explanation for a decision made by the system.
By 1990, innovators within the industry pushed for more education around the introduction of healthcare analytics. During this time, there was a recognition by researchers and developers that Artificial Intelligence systems in healthcare had to be designed to build on the expertise of physicians and accommodate the absence of perfect data. Approaches involving Bayesian networks and artificial neural networks were applied to intelligent computing systems in healthcare.
Healthcare Analytics Today
Before the 2000s, almost all medical data was on paper, and physicians spent hours manually entering information. Today, healthcare analytics is changing how medical professionals can work with patient data to execute a better experience. Our modern neural networks can outperform humans in tasks that are more complex than EKG interpretation. Doctors and nurses now use handheld devices to record patients’ real-time data and instantly update their medical history. With these digital advancements, better and more accessible treatments are available for a wide variety of diseases, making healthcare more efficient, providing advanced care, and supporting a higher rate of disease control.
HealthAxis’ Role in Healthcare Analytics
Our HxLogic solution is a comprehensive, integrable system enabling full lifecycle analysis. It effectively consolidates and analyzes data into usable and easily consumable information that pinpoints areas for action. Our system provides hundreds of dynamic metrics with alerts and reports to healthcare professionals through our pre-built healthcare data model, data marts, intelligence dashboards, reports, and analytics.
Using HxLogic you can manage healthcare costs, adapt and become more compliant with new healthcare regulations, improve quality of care, detect fraud, and streamline processes.
Our dedicated healthcare team at HealthAxis provides consulting and implementation services from strategy and planning through end-user training and personalized support. Let us help you identify and meet your analytic goals. Get started today with HealthAxis.
