Neil Smiley, CEO of Loopback Analytics, offers insight into how data analytics is being used today and how it will shape the future of healthcare.
Question: Are the majority of healthcare providers currently using data analytics to their full capacity?
Neil Smiley: Most healthcare providers are using some kind of data analytics to track population measures, such as readmission rates. A lot of providers are using analytics based on claims data. However, for real-time decision making, claims data arrives too late to be of use. To use analytics to their full capacity, healthcare providers need to tap real-time data locked up in clinical systems to proactively identify patient risk factors while patients are transitioning between care settings.
Q: Why is it important for healthcare providers to adopt data analytics tools?
NS: It is not cost effective to provide interventions to all patients. Data analytics tools are needed to stratify risk and match patients with appropriate intervention intensity. Data analytics are also important when evaluating the effectiveness of care partners or intervention strategies. It is critical that analytics be used in outcome reporting to ensure comparison populations are of equivalent risk.
Q: Is it feasible for smaller providers (i.e. independent physician groups) to use data analytics?
NS: A significant challenge for all providers is integration of data across multiple systems. Smaller providers, such as independent physician groups are less likely to have dedicated IT staff, or have advanced data integration and analytical tools. Older systems used by small providers may not support data interoperability. The good news is that new cloud-based analytics solutions can significantly lower the barriers to accessing analytics tools that have previously only been affordable for very large systems.
Q: How can larger providers, such as hospitals and health systems, implement data analytics tools organization-wide?
NS: A few large providers are pursuing a “rip and replace” strategy in an effort to get all their care settings running on the same technology platform. In theory, if the entire enterprise is all running on the same EHR, data sharing and analytics will be easier. However, in most cases, organization-wide analytics solutions will have to span a multiple systems. Organizations will need an effective Master Index approach to identify common patients and connect episodes of care across systems and providers.
Even with vertically integrated health systems, an extended network of local partners will be needed to provide full coverage of services across the care continuum. Large providers have an opportunity to be the catalyst within their region for coalitions comprised of providers across the care continuum with whom they share patients.
Q: How do you foresee the role of data analytics changing in healthcare over the next five years? The next ten?
NS: In the next five years, there will be an explosion of real-time consumer data to supplement traditional clinical information sources. Analytics will be used to detect patterns in an ever expanding sea of data and providers will be challenged with integrating data from more diverse sources. We will need to wrestle to balance individual patient privacy and the benefits to be derived from analysis of big data at a population level.
In the next 10 years, data analytics will drive advancements in personalized medicine. Care that previously was only available in the hospital or skilled nursing will be enabled in an outpatient setting or at home, as the kind of data monitoring that was previously available in an Intensive Care Unit moves to the home. Machine learning, coupled with feedback loop from real-time monitors will move our healthcare system from one that reacts to adverse events, only after they happen, to more proactive intervention.
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