European healthcare: Using data to do more with less
Dr Thore Rabe of EMC discusses the benefits of using a data lake to mine and analyse all sources of data in order to provide insights into how to provide better patient care and improve efficiencies
With aging populations, new technology innovations, and consumer expectations changing, healthcare providers are being asked to deliver the highest standards of patient care with the slimmest of resources. To overcome these challenges, healthcare providers need to look to their data as a means of driving efficiency and innovation to ensure quicker patient diagnosis and treatment, says Dr Thore Rabe, vice president of EMEA for the Isilon Division at EMC
Healthcare organisations need to ensure patient data is secure and that it meets regulatory compliance from personal medical records to genetic data
Healthcare systems across Europe are going through interesting times. On the one hand are a set of major challenges, led by growing and aging populations and a corresponding increase in long-term illnesses. On the other are a set of technology innovations, from MRI to genome sequencing and personalised medicine, all of which have the potential to revolutionise treatments and potentially improve outcomes for millions of patients.
Patient expectations of healthcare are also changing. Not only are they more demanding than ever, they also have higher expectations of the service they expect to receive. It is, as 89% of healthcare professionals agree, a trend driven by technology, with patients demanding everything from faster access to services and personalised experienced to 24/7 access and connectivity and access on more devices.
All this is coming at a time when resources are more constrained than ever for the industry. Healthcare providers are being asked to do much more with less; to deliver the highest standards of patient care with the slimmest of resources.
The role of data
To overcome these challenges, healthcare providers need to look to their data assets as a means of driving efficiency and innovation to ensure an improved service. And what a rich source of data assets they have!
Healthcare data is currently growing at an enormous 48%. While this provides a huge opportunity for those organisations that can harness this data, the sheer volume of data being produced presents a technical challenge, namely how they cost-effectively collect and store such a huge amount of data. Finding a solution to this issue is worth the effort however, as doing so presents an incredible opportunity to transform healthcare for the better, unlocking billions of Euros in efficiencies.
Having access to patient data will help health organisations provide quicker and more-effective patient care and, ultimately, help save lives. These benefits need to be highlighted directly to the consumer
Data is increasingly flowing between different departments; from X-rays to data captured from Alzheimer patients’ wearable sensors, advances in medical research and projects are creating an abundance of data. All this needs to be managed and analysed in order to spot important trends and patterns. This will help to deliver positive outcomes for patients such as quicker diagnosis and treatment, as well as helping medical practitioners work more efficiently.
Getting to grips with data
So, how do healthcare organisations overcome the storage conundrum and unlock the potential of big data?
The first issue to overcome is poor data sharing policy and process. Healthcare organisations need to ensure patient data is secure and that it meets regulatory compliance from personal medical records to genetic data.
Currently, new Data Protection Regulation is being negotiated by the European Union (EU), which will affect how personal information can be stored, used and shared in all EU member states, including the sharing of data with third parties. However, as it stands, these proposals are incompatible with ethical standards that require patient consent to be given before taking part in health research.
Problems over data privacy are preventing many health organisations from innovating in this area. To overcome this, greater transparency and awareness needs to be generated between the healthcare community, governments and consumers to ensure that data is used responsibly. Having access to patient data will help health organisations provide quicker and more-effective patient care and, ultimately, help save lives. These benefits need to be highlighted directly to the consumer.
Out with the old
Healthcare providers also need to overcome the burden of remaining paper-based processes. The industry has to go digital. It’s the only way it will be able to cope with the scale, the reality of medical litigation, and the productivity challenge the healthcare system faces. While progress is certainly being made across Europe with investment in this market expected to grow from $6.5bn in 2014 to $7.1bn by the end of 2015, there is still a long way to go.
The data lake makes it easy for healthcare professionals to mine and analyse all sources of data for insights into patient care
Finally, healthcare organisations must look to replace the current fragmented and limited infrastructure used to support their operations. Healthcare organisations need to consolidate and virtualise infrastructures and scale-out. A period of transformation will need to take place where healthcare communities build well-run hybrid clouds with supporting data lakes for analytics.
Data lakes improve patient care
A data lake draws all data into a single location to reduce or eliminate siloes across the healthcare enterprise while collecting data from trusted external sources, such as research centres and public health databases. The data lake makes it easy for healthcare professionals to mine and analyse all sources of data for insights into patient care. The business teams, meanwhile, can analyse data from the lake to understand how they can make their organisations more efficient and in a way that won’t adversely affect patient care.
With such data-driven insights, healthcare providers can further advance accountable care initiatives, creating a new realm of data science for uncovering trends, patterns, relationships, correlations, and discoveries that can benefit patients through an integrated healthcare model
With such data-driven insights, healthcare providers can further advance accountable care initiatives, creating a new realm of data science for uncovering trends, patterns, relationships, correlations, and discoveries that can benefit patients through an integrated healthcare model. This is a future vision of healthcare in Europe capable of addressing the challenges the region faced without seeing costs spiral out of control.
