Given its size and complexity, this is welcome news for the entire ecosystem, including consumers. Technological advances in cloud computing, data warehousing, artificial intelligence and other areas have gotten to the point where being data-driven is now within every organization’s grasp.
While we’re still a long way from the majority of the healthcare sector – which encompasses payers, providers, genomics, pharma, life and bio sciences and beyond – using data analytics and data sharing to take actions that ultimately result in improved patient outcomes, the tools to get there are readily available today. And, from a business perspective, data analytics are also helping forward-thinking organizations to reduce costs, enable new business models and create new revenue streams.
So, if the tools to achieve all these fantastic results are readily available, why isn’t every organization taking advantage? Fear of change and security/compliance concerns are two of the biggest reasons. This isn’t surprising for a massive and slow-moving industry like healthcare, but moving to the cloud mitigates these concerns.
It all starts with the cloud
The entry point for becoming a data-driven healthcare organization is the cloud. In fact, it’s not if an organization is going to embrace the cloud, it’s when. Fortunately, getting into the cloud today is quick, easy and more cost-effective than going the build-your-own or on-premises, legacy system routes.
The cloud and the powerful data analytics it makes possible are essential today as the healthcare industry moves from a fee-for-service model that pays providers for activity to an outcomes-based model that pays them based on patient health outcomes. As the chart below shows, we’re in a transition period now, but the trend is clearly moving toward the outcomes-based model
The truth is that most healthcare organizations want to be further along than they are with regard to their data usage. But until they can get past their fear of changing the tech stack and get their heads around the potential of cost savings and improvements in patient care that cloud-enabled data analytics can provide, they will remain stuck.
In my experience, there has always been an inflection point where an organization finally decides that the benefits outweigh the risks: a point where the decision-maker takes action. In a previous role as CIO for a pharmacy products and services company, I reached this point after test driving a cloud-based data warehousing service and knowing immediately that it was the right solution for our company. So I got all of my IT leadership in a room, put my credit card information in AWS, and told them, “We’re in the cloud.” Once we flipped that proverbial switch, our business accelerated.
Flipping the switch
The sales cycle for any product or service in the healthcare sector tends to be very long. There is the fear of moving on from legacy systems that currently run the business (albeit expensively and inefficiently in most cases), incumbent IT and executives with low risk tolerances, security and compliance concerns, bureaucracy…it’s a long list.
The way that forward-thinking organizations are overcoming these obstacles is by working hand-in-hand with cloud vendors which specialize in producing data-driven outcomes, not just in healthcare but in other large, complex industries. In fact, before engaging deeply with a vendor they ask themselves if they have the expertise necessary to execute their analytics strategy in the cloud. If not, then they work with a systems integrator and/or the vendor’s services division to get there.
The truly high-value cloud vendors bring expertise and lockdown solutions to security and compliance concerns. Protected health information (PHI) like the kind found in medical records is the gold standard for cyber criminals. Given that medical records contain patient names, addresses, birthdays and social security numbers, a single record is worth 10 to 20 times more than a U.S. credit card number.
The cloud can provide greater security and compliance than on-premises systems. The best vendors help their customers become HIPAA compliant, PCI DSS certified, and FedRamp Ready and maintain security compliance and attestations including SOC 2, Type II.
A more recent trend that will accelerate the move to becoming data-driven in a secure and compliant way is data sharing. One way to think of it is as a better way to do interoperability without moving data. This is critical to the healthcare sector, where the volume of data is massive. A big problem in the industry is the integrity of data, which is impacted by copying and storing in multiple locations. The more copies you make, the more you run into data integrity, aging, privacy and compliance issues. Data sharing solves these problems by creating a single source of truth.
Becoming data-driven is easier — and more essential — than ever
As the healthcare industry evolves and becomes more data-driven, the demand for modern, cloud-built solutions will continue to expand. If your organization’s tech stack is unable to keep pace, the time has never been better to find a solution that simplifies data management, ensures security and compliance, and frees up additional capacity for analytics.
Anything that reduces costs, enables new business models, creates new revenue streams AND results in improved patient outcomes isn’t just forward-thinking – it’s common sense.
