Healthcare and Data Analytics
Healthcare providers, insurers and pharmacies, to a great extent, are using data analytics to address the issue of ballooning healthcare costs in some of the developed countries.
Insurers in healthcare segment are trying to use data analytics to establish high risk consumers.
On the other hand, pharmacy managers utilize analytics to predict medication compliance.
Hospital care providers, meanwhile, use data analytics to identify the gaps in the care provided and improve delivery along with patient satisfaction.
Insurers, Pharmacies, Hospitals are all part of the same eco-system working towards delivering quality care and rational treatment to consumers.
World over, organizations are collecting data, both internal and external, organizing it, generating insights, and finally preparing recommendations to optimize the quality of operations and customer satisfaction. Analytics and fact-based decision making can be equally powerful in achieving governmental goals as they are to the corporate business objectives.
So far, in India, the health information and healthcare data analytics have been extensively used to measure health indicators, comparative analysis for planning and administration of quality health services and scientific research.
However, currently, there are no adequate survey-based data nor an administrative reporting system that provide basic hospital service statistics such as dis-aggregated information on types of out-patient visits and in-door admission, bed utilization rates, bed days, occupancy rates, and average length of stay, etc. The availability of quality data on morbidity patterns and patient safety is also grossly inadequate. Further, healthcare organizations are wary of technology integration due to the additional cost burden caused by requirement of IT infrastructure and technical expertise. In all, this scenario, limits the ability to design innovative health insurance products and effective patient safety programs in the hospitals.
INCHES Healthcare, by the virtue of being group of clinical as well as domain experts help insurers decipher medical facts and reports to raise the flags for accurate risk calculation and thus risk mitigation, is in the space where data can be modelled for meaningful insights for the ecosystem.
INCHES Healthcare is working with most of the Insurance companies in India to provide opinions and risk assessments. INCHES Labs part of INCHES Group is formed to focus on the Technology Leverage and Solutions maturity for INCHES Healthcare and ecosystem. Its focus during the coming 24-36 months is on Data Analytics and Technology tools which will help collate data in this sector and provide relevant insights to Insurers, hospitals and ecosystem. This will surely improve risk assessment and design innovative product offerings for the insurers and provide value to the consumers at the optimal cost
Data Analytics in Healthcare
With increased disposable incomes, additional discretionary expenditure on health and demand for quality healthcare, importance of data analytics is growing in the delivery side of health services. It is estimated that India’s share of digital information will grow multi fold in coming few years, driven by the roll-out of 5G, digitization of the networks, government services like the Unique ID project, Census, among others as per a report by IT solution provider EMC and IDC.
According to another report by McKinsey five key areas with maximum big data potential in India are healthcare, public sector, retail, manufacturing and personal location data.
Most Indian Healthcare organizations are now embarking on the analytics journey. Data analytics in healthcare strategy is increasingly viewed as the key engine of an organization’s dynamic capability. Certain tertiary care hospitals have integrated information management systems and EMR, to deep archive their data into warehouses and subsequently use it for data mining, research and analytics to make smarter decisions for improved quality of healthcare. The emerging trend in data storage is the cloud, which is a useful application for healthcare as it reduces the cost burden and is simple to manage. As the health care industry moves to electronic health records, the storage of data is increasingly going to be on the cloud. This application would enhance the capacity of storage of medical images for longer period. Besides, data analytics is opening up other avenues and opportunities in healthcare. These are:
- Product Design and Customer Segmentation
- Fraud Management
- Quality of Service Delivery
Product Design and Customer Segmentation
Providers and insurers can employ powerful analytical tools to identify the segments that matter, uncover useful insights about behavior and point the way to process changes that will truly make a difference in patient satisfaction. INCHES will provide relevant Analytics Insights to the associated Insurance Companies.
Fraud Management
Data analysis technology enables auditors and fraud examiners to analyze transactional data (Like Claims Data) to gain insight into how well internal controls are operating and to identify transactions that indicate fraudulent activity or the heightened risk of fraud. Studies indicate that it makes great business sense to invest in anti-fraud mechanism as a rupee spent on fraud prevention and management is worth 10 saved from fraud.
Quality of Service Delivery:
mechanism Providers are increasingly using Clinical analytics — using patient data to improve clinical outcomes, report quality measures, and identify medical and patient trends. Health care can use business intelligence tools to track trends related to costs, revenues and resources, as well as to study the treatment needs of patient population, assess care quality metrics and streamline the cumbersome billing and claims process.
Reference & Source : FICCI and Sidharth Sonawat
