A massive amount of data is churned out globally every day and the healthcare sector accounts for about 30% of it. That’s because data is captured from multiple sources these days – from wearable devices and electronic health records (EHRs) to laboratory systems and medical imaging. But is it sufficient for better clinical decision-making and patient outcomes? No.
How securely you gather, connect, share, and analyze it determines the real value of data. In other words, healthcare providers should be able to access secure and accurate data-powered insights on time. This can ease early identification of risks, care coordination, personalized treatment, and informed decision-making.
Simultaneously, you must protect sensitive patient details and comply with regulations around data privacy. This means, health data should be a global public good as well as strategic asset. So, let’s learn about optimizing patient care through insights that are data-driven yet safe.
Whenever you interact with a patient, valuable data is generated. And it can fuel improved clinical decisions in the future. Why?
When you integrate healthcare information across various care settings, providers get better visibility into a patient’s overall health. They don’t have to rely on isolated records. Instead, it’s possible to view holistic medical histories, allergies, lab results, medicines, treatment plans, and imaging studies in a single place.
This enables:
Many organizations, in fact, are leveraging analytics nowadays to spot health trends and forecast patient risks. They are also optimizing operations and efficiently allocating resources this way.
You can depend on data-powered insights only when the underlying data’s quality is good. Else, it’s not uncommon to grapple with:
And let’s not forget – subpar data is responsible for inefficient workflows, clinical mistakes, delayed treatment, and inflated administrative expenses. Hence, ensure patient information is correct, validated, and standardized. It’s the key to reliable insights.
Storing data across systems that are disconnected (like radiology platforms, billing software, lab systems etc.) makes it challenging to access a patient’s complete history. That’s because different systems tend to operate differently.
Interoperability addresses this conundrum though. Multiple applications, devices, and information systems can access, integrate, exchange, and utilize health data securely and across your company’s boundaries.
Essentially, with interoperability, you can:
Simply storing healthcare data cannot give you actionable insights. You must leverage advanced analytics to study the same and predict risks, detect trends, and power up decision-making. These examples shed more light:
Using analytics, you can zero in on patients who are more vulnerable to medication complications, adverse events, and hospital readmission. You can also identify those who are likely to witness aggravation of chronic conditions or contract sepsis. This translates to intervention early on and also better results.
Depending only on generalized protocols isn’t enough for treating individual patients. Rather, you can customize treatment plans by analyzing lifestyle details, genetics, lab results, and clinical histories.
Analyzing aggregated data can help you spot trends and patterns across patient populations. This especially comes in handy for:
When population health strategies are backed by data, it’s possible to enhance care without going overboard with costs.
Since medical records feature vital personal and financial data, cybercriminals often target healthcare entities. In fact, a couple of years ago, the average data breach cost was the highest for the healthcare industry, at above $9 million per breach.
So, how to balance security with accessibility?
Make sure patient information is only accessible for authorized users. Make access controls role-based, so employees get to view only those details that are relevant to their responsibilities.
To safeguard delicate information against unauthorized access, encrypt data that’s at rest as well as in transit.
With comprehensive audit logs, you can keep a tab on who accessed patient records, the time when it happened, and the changes made. This can strengthen regulatory compliance and support security investigations.
Have strong policies in place around governance. They should define data ownership, quality standards, and sharing processes. Focus on privacy requirements and retention policies too. This will ensure data is shared responsibly while individual privacy is protected.
Collaboration is the cornerstone of effective healthcare. After all, patients can receive care from hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, primary care physicians, specialists, home healthcare providers, and even rehab centers.
So, when data sharing is secure, every care provider can easily access the details required for informed decision-making. And that again brings us to interoperability. Moving beyond isolated systems means you can use accessible, standardized data to offer patient-centric and coordinated care.
Also, when data flow between authorized care providers is secure, patients can expect:
AI is increasingly assuming a key role in healthcare, and for good reason. AI-powered applications support everything from clinical documentation and medical imaging analysis to operational planning, disease prediction, and decision support.
However, high-quality data is the bedrock of AI models. If datasets are biased, incomplete, or incorrect, AI can make unreliable recommendations. Establishing robust procedures for data quality, validation, and governance can counter this issue though.
Maximizing your data’s value is possible by concentrating on these practices:
Data-fueled insights that maintain the security of patient information can transform healthcare in multiple ways. From personalizing treatment and coordinating care seamlessly to making smarter clinical decisions, there’s much you can do. However, leveraging advanced analytics isn’t enough for that.
You need to ensure your data is interoperable, high-quality, and governed well while adhering to privacy regulations. Hence, invest in avant-garde solutions for verifying identities and addresses, validating and de-duplicating data, and matching records. It’s essential for operating more efficiently and bettering patient outcomes.
To learn more about the advantages Melissa brings to healthcare, visit www.melissa.com/en-au/healthcare