Quality Patient Care Strategies 8

Big data in the healthcare industry will be close to to get even bigger as a result of the move toward electronic health reports. Electronic medical records are obtaining a boost because of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Consequently, medical researcher researchers may expect a huge influx of healthcare data to analyze.

The scientific community is abuzz about the potential for big data in the medical research arena. As outlined by Science 2.0, a science blog, some of the clearest opportunities recently identified in this area revolve around reducing costs in several key areas:

High-cost patients - Did you know that just 5 percent of patients account for roughly half of all US healthcare costs? By targeting these high-cost patients, big data has the possibility to make a huge impact on total healthcare spending in the nation. This really is a great example of the Pareto principle at the workplace.

Readmissions - With nearly one third of readmissions deemed to be preventable, using big data to predict which patients are at a high risk of readmission could lead to better interventions and reduced re-admissions.

Triage - Big data could also be used to improve the triage process by applying algorithms to send patients to the correct unit for care and ensuring that everyone involved in providing that care is promptly informed throughout the process.

Decompensation - Decompensation refers to a patient's worsening health condition. Patient monitoring tools such as heart rate and blood pressure monitors are used to measure a patient's current condition. Using big data, researchers may be better able to determine the risk of decompensation, allowing healthcare providers to intervene prior to the patient's condition worsens.

Adverse events - Nobody wishes to experience an adverse health event for example infection, a drug reaction, or renal failure. These events often result in death, yet will often be preventable. Big data could make huge gains in both preventing adverse events and slashing their associated costs.

Diseases affecting multiple organ systems - Systemic diseases that affect multiple organ systems are among-the costliest to treat and manage. Using big data, medical researchers could possibly be better able to predict the likely progression of a disease which, sequentially, would help healthcare providers develop a far more effective, and a lot more cost-effective, treatment solution.

While these areas all represent significant opportunities for medical researchers as well as the medical industry at large, how can researchers possibly make experience of all that data? Based on Dolphin, "Big Data relates to the very fact that today's business intelligence systems are experiencing record levels of data growth from terabytes to petabytes and beyond. The challenge is in maximizing the opportunity for real-time business intelligence while minimizing the impact of exploding data volume on productivity and total cost of ownership (TCO)."

This is done throughout the usage of business intelligence and data archiving software. With the correct tools in hand, medical researchers have the ability to make sense of the sheer volumes of healthcare data from the past, present, and future.