With the large volume of data generation in healthcare industry through systems for record keeping, compliance, regulatory requirements and patient care, there is a greater need for accurate analysis to drive better patient outcomes.
System generates data but there is need to analyze it. The data by itself won’t drive value and better patient outcomes. Analytics will. There can be a vast amount of data that can be collected across the health care eco-system such as from physician notes, health check- up tests, medical records, patient scans, and information from wearable and other monitoring devices, says Samarth Jain, CEO & founder of Positive Bioscience Ltd.
Analysis of this Big Data holds the potential to lead to better outcomes such as analysing patient characteristics to identify the most clinically and cost effective treatments, or applying analytics to identify individuals who would benefit from preventative care or lifestyle changes. The power of analytics in patient health is also enabling people to become more invested in their own health. Transparency of healthcare options and access to their own health data empowers and incentivizes patients to make individualized decisions regarding their health, Jain said.
The push of Big Data analytics has also launched healthcare into a new frontier - Genomics, a field that includes sequencing, mapping, and analysing the entire DNA sequence of individual humans to map and analyse individual genes and alleles as well as their interactions. The opportunity to use genomic information to improve health is a direct result of the Human Genome Project. Using genomic information about an individual for diagnostic or therapeutic decision-making is making an impact in the fields of oncology, pharmacology, rare and undiagnosed diseases, and infectious disease. Understanding each individual’s genome has enabled predictive medicine, which draws on a patient’s genetic data to determine the most appropriate treatments, he added.
By combining sequenced genomic data with other medical data, physicians and researchers can get a better picture of disease in an individual. This makes for more rapid and accurate detection, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases.
Medical analytics is bringing together medical experts with data scientists. As a result, both people and technology is able to extract true insight from the vast array of information to provide better outcomes in clinical practice, concluded Positive Bioscience CEO.