Indian healthcare ready for Big Data Analytics:
Indian tech space has evolved over time since the opening of the economy. We have seen a boom in almost every sector be it automobile or mobile space. Today healthcare technology sector is witnessing yet another evolution: Big Data Analytics for meeting the challenges of accessibility and cost. We are now on the cusp of the Big Data revolution and in my opinion, this is an opportune time for the Indian healthcare fraternity to embrace Big Data Analytics with full gusto.

Big data, analytics and decision support systems go hand in hand. In healthcare, decentralization is the key and the industry has started realizing this only in the recent past. One of the challenges for decentralization is the lack of trained resources. There is a severe shortage of physicians and hospital beds.  India currently has only 600-800 intensivists which are way too less given the WHO standards.

Another challenge is poor access to care in Tier 2/3 areas increases the costs, thus resulting in lack of affordable healthcare. Finally, the disease burden statistics show that cardiovascular diseases are on the rise and the leading cause of death in India is non-communicable diseases. But these challenges can be effectively addressed with Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) which are based on Big Data. By analyzing trends and comparing them to stored knowledge base, we can achieve a significant number of predictions and put in place proactive disease management protocols. The power to access and analyze enormous data sets can improve our ability to anticipate and treat illnesses better. This data can help throw light on individuals who are at risk for serious health problems. The ability to use Big Data to identify gaps in the healthcare system can also lower the cost of healthcare across the board.

However, there are a few challenges which need to be addressed. Over a period of time, India will build a staggering amount of healthcare data but it would be spread among hospitals, primary care providers, researchers, health insurers, and state and central governments-just to name a few. Each of these acts as a silo, preventing data transparency across the healthcare system. Another challenge would be veracity of data with different types of data from different systems, adherence to standard formats, inter-operability issues and homogeneity which would also pose a great challenge. In addition to aggregating a massive amount of data, there is the challenge of maintaining patient privacy.  It is critical to figure out on  how to leverage information to deliver better quality care to patients while keeping it secure is a major challenge.  Several issues will have to be addressed to capture the full potential of Big Data. Policies related to privacy, security, intellectual property, and even liability will need to be addressed in a big data world. Organizations need not only to put the right talent and technology in place but also structure workflows and incentives to optimize the use of big data. Access to data is critical as companies will increasingly need to integrate information from multiple data sources, often from third parties, and the incentives have to be in place to enable this.  

High chronic disease burden with CVDs causing most mortality. In fact a 2012 WHO study on Indian healthcare system illustrates the clear cause of deaths that occurred in 2008 and the expected deaths in 2020.

Big Data ushers in a paradigm shift
At Philips, we strongly believe Big Data Analytics can usher in a paradigm shift in the Indian healthcare industry. There are several areas where Philips is working on to leverage the potential of Big Data. For example, healthcare today is largely reactive and is organized around acute conditions responding when things go wrong. This is one of the reasons of the escalating costs. But if you can predict and monitor people for deterioration, you can manage the condition a lot better. The Philips' Innovation Campus is at the core of our company's technology interventions in the healthcare space.

Several studies in recent years have shown that digital remote monitoring solutions have a dramatic impact in treating patients with chronic diseases. One such joint study on heart failure patients - conducted over a four-year period by six Dutch hospitals, three of Netherlands' largest health insurance companies, and Philips - revealed that this new care delivery model led to a 57% reduction in the number of nursing days as care moved away from the hospital setting and into the patient's home. It resulted in a 52% decrease in hospital admissions for the patient group, and on average, a 26% cost-of-care saving per patient.

Another study over five years examined the impact of Philips' remote intensive care unit (eICU) programme on nearly 120,000 critical care patients. The programme enables healthcare professionals from a centralized eICU centre to provide 24/7 care for critically ill patients using bi-directional audio/video technology, and a clinical decision support system. The study found that eICU patients, compared to patients receiving usual ICU care, were 26% more likely to survive the ICU, and were discharged from the ICU 20% faster.

Philips is now bringing these initiatives to India by building an open digital platform that can link to all kinds of devices, allows doctors to feed information about patients, allows patients, relatives and doctors to be connected to each other, and do large scale analytics. Any doctor anywhere will be able to look into the entire history of a patient to do better diagnosis. Relatives and professional care personnel can get immediate alerts in case of emergencies. The vast quantum of data collected on the platform can lead to algorithms that can improve diagnoses and figure out what works for what kind of patient.

Philips Innovation Campus(PIC)  has been working on this opportunity for the past two years and has already built a strong team of over 150 data analysts. We plan to increase to meet the growing need and demand. In fact  recently launched an analytics platform known as  The Healthsuite Digital Platform to provide real-time information for healthcare workers and decision makers. Additionally, our areas of focus would include healthcare, lighting, supply chain, operations, sales, marketing and customer productivity enhancements among others.

Big Data market opportunity globally and in India
According to the Avendus Capital report, the market for global data analytics outsourcing stood at $500 million to $550 million in 2010. Unlike the growth rates of larger IT services and business process outsourcing (like call centres and medical transcription), the momentum in global data analytics outsourcing isn’t slowing. India’s competitive advantage in the data analytics field will continue—the country is expected to pull in nearly $1.2 billion in data analytics business by 2015.

In India, healthcare data analytics is about a $100-million opportunity and is expected to double within a couple of years. According to a recent study by MarketResearch.com, the total market size for Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare will reach $117 billion by 2020. This is touted to be a $1billion outsourcing opportunity globally. Philips holds 50 per cent market share in the healthcare monitoring devices space and our hardware experience will help us do better in data analytics. While the use of big data will matter across sectors, some sectors are set for greater gains

Big Data drives productivity
If we look at the global scenario, per McKinsey, data have swept into every industry and business function and there are ways through which big data can create value. Leading companies are using data collection and analysis to conduct controlled experiments to make better management decisions; others are using data for basic low-frequency forecasting to high-frequency now casting to adjust their business levers just in time and some are using it to improve the development of the next generation of products and services.

The use of big data will become a key basis of competition and growth for individual firms. It will also underpin new waves of productivity growth and consumer surplus offering considerable benefits to consumers as well as to companies and organizations. Philips is already ahead in this journey and the market is growing.