Most of us consider Business Intelligence for use within...well...business. However, more and more of the concepts and approaches that we leverage around business intelligence are finding their ways into the world of health care, including clinical care and research. But, perhaps, not at the speed it should.
Data analysis is nothing new to the world of healthcare; they have been leveraging data intelligence for years, including bioinformatics and other data analysis around the delivery an effectiveness of healthcare. However, I see a bit of a chasm in what are currently the best practices around data analysis in the world of healthcare, and the best practices in the world of holistic business intelligence. Perhaps they should come together?
The reality is that there is a ton of data out there, typically held within hospitals, that unto itself has little value. However, when combine with other information around treatments and outcomes, some patterns should emerge that assist those driving healthcare to make the correct calls as to where to invest in research and care. In end result is not a better run business, making more money, but lives saved, and pain averted.
Climbing down from my "high horse" around this issue, this is really a matter of a problem that needs a technology solution, and indeed the solution exists. Truth-be-told, and as the current administration is stating, we could do a much better job in tracking healthcare electronically, including the "business intelligence" around the effectiveness of treatments, spotting patterns of trouble, and patterns of success.
A few things need to occur:
First, a centralized data repository, or central data warehouse, should be established where records can be gathered from all points of care, taking privacy and security very seriously of course. The emerging use of cloud computing could be the right platform for this.
Second, determine any number of complimentary data sets that should be analyzed on context of this clinical data.
Finally, establish an approach and key enabling BI technology to provide a platform for analysis, usable about key researchers, docs, and decision makers.
Great case for an investment here. Indeed, it will benefit all of us at one time or another.
I believe work has been done in this area privately for some time. I was involved in a project over a decade ago to build a data warehouse of hospital outcomes information for a data aggregator. Hospitals were able to use OLAP tools remotely to access this information, doing some root cause analysis as well as creating various cohorts to compare themselves against.
So far as I know, this application has continued to grow in scale and breath of function. Surely there are other 3rd party efforts as well.
-Neil Raden
Hired Brains