Learn how to use analytics to tackle your top healthcare challenges

By Tom Lawry, Director, Microsoft Worldwide Health

October 27, 2015

When I ask health leaders what keeps them up at night, the list is long, but among their top concerns are the following:

Empowering caregivers to contribute to cost and quality improvement initiatives. Because caregivers are on the frontlines of healthcare, they need to become intimately involved in performance improvement missions. They need the right data analysis for their specific role to help them make decisions that align with their health organization’s initiatives. And they need to be able to quickly and easily gain that insight from anywhere, without having to ask a data analyst. Today’s analytics tools make that easier than ever. Using self-service tools on mobile devices, health professionals can make informed, real-time decisions to help improve cost and quality outcomes. For example, nurses can use insight at their fingertips to make point-of-care decisions about best practices for infection control, patient safety, or medication administration.
Getting more out of the EHR system to reach clinical and financial goals. Often, significant gaps exist between the information collected via EHRs and organizational goals. For example, health organizations want to move from collecting information about length of stay to actually reducing length of stay; from gathering information about supply utilization to actually decreasing the supply volume; and from amassing data about the prevalence of diabetes to actually improving the disease state. Health organizations can use today’s analytics to bridge such gaps with predictive, real-time insights and tools for better caregiver collaboration and patient engagement.
Managing patient care service portfolios to improve population health. Population health initiatives aim to improve overall outcomes for entire groups of patients. To make the most of this concept, health organizations need to identify exactly what population health efforts can make the biggest impact. Predictive analytics can help health professionals identify health trends such as an increase in diabetes in a demographic area and determine what interventions will be most effective in improving a population’s health outcomes.
Engaging patients in their own care to improve outcomes. Of the 330 respondents to the 26th Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey, 72 percent indicated that consumer and patient considerations—such as patient engagement, satisfaction, and quality of care—would be the business issue that most affects their organization over the course of the next two years. The good news is that patients can now more easily get engaged in their health by, for example, using wearable fitness devices and at-home medical devices. And by using advanced analytics, organizations can turn all the data emanating from the Internet of Things into actionable intelligence they can use to collaborate with patients on improving their well-being.

Want to learn how you can take advantage of today’s advanced analytics technologies to tackle these challenges and make a real impact for better health? Check out the “Advanced Analytics in Health” eBook, published by HIMMS Media and sponsored by Microsoft. It provides real-world tips and examples to help you learn how you can:

Harness the power of real-time data
Use data to predict what will happen in the future
Increase the productivity of knowledge workers at all levels of the organization
Combine various types of data from internal and external sources to drive more pervasive insights

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback via email, Facebook, or Twitter.