Big Data & Healthcare Informatics

It does not matter, whether we shy away from “Big Data”, it is a reality and is a huge altered path for healthcare concerns. Technologies associated to Cloud and Big Data are providing new data management tools to improve and alter the path that how the data associated to a patient (entry in the hospital, assignment of bed, physician’s visit, monitoring by a nurse, meal provision, any other service to the patient) is captured, managed and utilized to make informed decisions by the healthcare industry. The changes in organizational policies and business rules are happening now and we are witnessing the scalable distributed computing utilization in the Cloud with SaaS (Software as a Service) with available dashboards (with embedded data models). These models, structures, software all need system architecture as their foundation, for us to work in proficient ways, which is helpful for all stakeholders associated to a patient, who is coming in the healthcare facility.

Legacy systems, which are pervasive in our healthcare system, were mostly designed to cater patient’s basic needs and the data used to be stored in databases by getting entered by data entry operators, as we know it traditionally. Now, in the world of Big Data, when we look at our daily operations both within and without of a hospital, it is quite automatic, that we come to realize that many physicians, surgeons, nurses, that we are working with are not necessarily conforming with the Master Data Management or MDM, and it is not their fault, as they are not the primary designers of medical equipment to generate data. The reasons for the difficulties that hospitals and healthcare systems are facing or trying to avoid are mostly their utilization of legacy systems, which were designed earlier in the business process and not where they are obvious to deal with the large quantities of data, as mostly the data used to be archived in either data stores or on magnetic tapes.

Anyone who is associated with Healthcare industry/market in any way can tackle these issues by engaging senior leadership of both medical as well as technological sides and the organization to ensure alignment of their strategic objectives by making informed decisions and cutting any red tapes. All information stakeholders need also to be involved throughout the organization within and without. Once these first precursors are met, it is imperative to identify the critical key performance indicators (KPIs) with metrics related to any healthcare concern by aligning all these factors with strategic objectives, which were set earlier. The deficiencies in an effectual data governance process at the establishment of organizational data management program will inexorably direct to concerns downstream, as well as data erroneousness and most importantly the unforeseen costs, which will impact on future growth.