Benefits of Data Analytics in Healthcare

“The core advantage of data is that it tells you something about the world that you didn’t know before.” - Hilary Mason (data scientist)

It’s no secret that the healthcare industry continues to improve and transform but understanding how data analytics plays a part in its transformation and benefits healthcare organizations may be the real secret. Today, hospitals, pharmacists, insurers, private practices, wellness companies, and other organizations in the healthcare space are using analytics to understand their business, patients, and surrounding market.

Before looking at the benefits, understanding the key types of data analytics that are currently being applied in the healthcare industry, may help explain what benefits can emerge from large volumes of data.

• Descriptive Analysis – Uses statistical techniques to describe or summarize a set of data.
• Discovery Analysis –?Raw data is analyzed and examines patterns and interconnections through machine learning and provides an understanding of further opportunities.
• Diagnostic Analysis – Explores the cause of an event.
• Predictive Analysis?- Based on modeling and forecasting methods, it uses data and assumptions to answer questions about what is yet to happen.
• Prescriptive Analysis – Determines patients’ previous conditions and calculates the possible risk that could occur later. This helps determine what protective treatment plan should be followed considering the risk factors.

?From these types of analyses, healthcare organizations can act upon and benefit from these analytic findings in several ways.

• ?Superior patient experiences and outcomes - Data can help medical professionals understand their patients better, diagnose an illness, recommend treatment options, prescribe medications, and more.
• Informed decision making – Predictive modeling tools and processes can better anticipate patient outcomes and allow healthcare professionals to make informed decisions.
• Real-time updates and alerts – Healthcare analytics technologies are being leveraged to facilitate patient care in real time allowing for immediate action.
• Fraud reduction – AI and ML powered technologies can be leveraged to identify fraudulent behavior before making an impact to a business. These can compare real-time information against historical business data to identify patterns.
• High operational efficiency - By integrating data analytics solutions, manual, time-consuming tasks can be automated allowing internal workflows to be optimized while lowering operational costs and increasing revenue.

Every facet of the healthcare industry stands to benefit from data analytics. It already has significantly improved healthcare in three areas: conducting medical studies, understanding the cost of medical tests and health insurance, and making preventative recommendations to patients. The future of healthcare analytics will include even?larger collections of data providing greater opportunity to benefit healthcare organizations. One advantage is they will be able to learn about something they didn’t know before.?

Source(s):

5 benefits of data analytics in healthcare | Codal

The Bright Future of Data Analytics in Healthcare Now (smu.edu)