How Data Analytics Propels Healthcare’s Proactive Approach

Compared to the growing trend of proactive healthcare, the healthcare module until now has focused on a reactive approach. Unlike a patient-centric healthcare system expanding currently, the reactive healthcare model was plan-centric; patients would visit the doctor when they developed certain symptoms or noticed something wasn’t right.?

The shortcomings posed by this healthcare model were brought to light not too long ago during the COVID-19 pandemic. While hospitals were filled with people needing immediate medical care, the healthcare infrastructure basically disintegrated. As a result, the supply chain was impacted.?

Physicians and healthcare providers soon realized that a reactive healthcare strategy proved ineffective – once they ran out of ventilators and oxygen.?

The recent decades have observed a shift in the healthcare model from reactive to proactive. Many healthcare institutions and organizations have agreed that implementing a preventive approach toward healthcare delivery is of utmost importance.?

Data management, cloud computing, and analytics plays have emerged as healthcare is transitioning to a more proactive model. These three key IT enablers play a major role in accelerating this transition and enhancing the efficiency of medical care delivery.?

Analytics and Proactive Healthcare

Typically, the healthcare system functions on a reactive basis. For instance, the healthcare team would asses the patient’s vitals like heart rate or temperature to determine the issue with that patient’s health.?

However, if the healthcare provider could foresee the patient’s condition before having to activate a rapid response, it would significantly improve outcomes by allowing the healthcare provider to intervene in advance, thus improving care delivery.?

Predictive analytics enhances the healthcare team’s workflow by providing early warning signs of a patient’s health deteriorating. It allows the healthcare provider more time to conduct clinical decisions.?

It also helps the care teams by letting them quickly assess the patient’s condition to decide on the necessary course of action. These teams are notified of the risk of the patient’s health deteriorating before it actually happens, letting them intervene and act on the patient’s condition. There are many predictive analytics-powered devices with which healthcare providers can monitor patient health.?

• Wearable Devices: They are devices that can be worn by the patients that collect data relating to the patient’s blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen levels, etc., and store it in the cloud, which can be accessed by healthcare providers.?
• Electronic Health Records: Digital records that gather patient data such as demographics or medical history that trigger warnings when the patient is in need of a medical check-up or tale prescriptions.?
• Patient Portals: An online portal that lets patients and healthcare providers access patient health records to optimize care delivery and management.?

This encourages value-based care and helps propel healthcare’s transition to a proactive model.?

Challenges to Implementing Proactive Healthcare

The path toward transitioning from reactive to proactive healthcare comes with its challenges.?

Security: Patient data is prone to breaches, hacking, and malware attacks. Healthcare organizations can store patient data in clouds and restrict access to sensitive patient data.?

Data Integration: Patient healthcare data is spread across multiple sources, which makes data integration challenging. Organizations must aggregate data and apply classification techniques to conduct effective analysis.?

Large Data Volumes: A large amount of data is gathered by healthcare institutions, which needs to be effectively managed and accessed.

Proactive Healthcare Opportunities

• Enhanced patient outcomes?
• Improved quality of patient care?
• Refined medical decision-making?
• Better clinical predictions?

Conclusion?

Capitalizing on data gathered by analytics can help clinicians deliver better patient care and gather insights that will further the proactive healthcare model. Cloud, data, and analytics are just a few examples that guide where the healthcare IT industry is headed.?