The health care industry needs better data analytics

Sandeep Green Vaswani — senior vice president of the Institute for Healthcare Optimization — discussed health care institutions' critical need for better data analytics programs in an article that was recently published by InformationWeek. According to Vaswani, as health care in America changes — the nation has already invested $20 billion in better health IT systems — big data will have to be gleaned to increase health optimization.

In other words, current systems like electronic medical records organize patient info and make it more easily accessibly for health professionals. However, these systems do not compile and analyze data to maximize quality and efficiency in health institutions. This is where greater collection of big data comes into play.

Vaswani recommended that the U.S. health care system must rely on greater efficiency to stay financially feasible. For example, Vaswani stated that using hospital beds more efficiently can save health organizations millions of dollars. Every time a hospital avoids purchasing a new bed, it dodges potentially paying between $1 and $3 million in construction costs and another $250,000 in annual operation costs. Moreover, these financial obligations can increase substantially if emergency medical care or intensive care is involved.

According to Azo Network subsidiary News-medical.net, health care professionals have recently begun investing in more health optimization systems. Namely, a program called GeneSolve will soon be licensed to qualified doctors on a broader scale to help improve preventative care outcomes and increase health care efficiency.

The use of big data systems like GeneSolve have already begun to help doctors and patients directly, according to the source.

"No doctor on his or her own would be able to process this much data about each patient so quickly and precisely," Dr. Marland Chancellor, MD, told News-medical.net. "GeneSolve makes it possible and improves patient outcomes more quickly and holistically than I have been able to achieve without the technology. I can already see it in my patients, and so can their families, friends, and co-workers. I've been looking for a system like this for a long time."