Drowning In Data? You Need Arm Floaties

Here's the kind of information you need for your wellbeing program:

• Biometric data (from screenings) ... check
• Behavioral data (from the Health Risk Assessment) ... check
• Clinical data (from claims) ... and check

All that's great, but here's the problem.

1. This data comes in as one big pile -- a deluge of rows and columns in a steady stream of datafiles.
2. All that information MUST be integrated together, because all 3 of them are all reciprocally interdependent. That means the behavioral data informs the clinical, which informs the biometric, and vise versa.
3. This wicked complexity means that, unless you have a system to triage and integrate these sources together, you'll just drown in all that data.

Put On Your Data Floaties BEFORE The Flood

Your data floatie is basically a system that you need to put in place before the tsunami ever happens.

This will 1) triage the information input, 2) organize it based on conditional logic, and then 3) give you some actionable outcomes.

Basically, this system keeps you from getting lost under the waves of information you need, in order to make an impact for your groups.

1. Triage the information input based on the priority of the data type: clinical, biometric, or behavioral. This allows you to set the algorithms below based on the end result needed: outcomes-based program vs participation-based program vs a hybrid of those.
2. Set Conditional Logic. This is where the magic happens and it's really the hardest part. IF the biometric data tell you one thing (possible diabetes), then look to the clinical data to assess treatment history, then to the behavioral data to understand what lifestyle element is missing.
3. Customize, at scale. As long as you account for those interdependencies between behavior, biometric, and clinical data, the algorithms can route targeted programs specific to each person's needs.

Best of all, a true "system" like this will program feedback loops so (at the end of a year, say) you can see how well your targeted programming performed to improve the health of each person. This allows you to improve the system performance year over year.

Data glut just muddies the water, making it all so confusion. If this article helped clarify the process in any way, please SHARE with a friend or group.