Every industry today claims or (at least) aims to be data-driven. Derived directly from the term, it means that data and facts are behind the wheels of decisions and actions. And since it’s so easy to collect data in today’s digitised world, this should be the case, regardless of the industry.
As one of the most important sectors, healthcare shouldn’t be an exception when it comes to intelligent decisions based on facts that arise from data. Besides that, healthcare is also one of the most data-intensive sectors, so it all boils down to how processes are optimised, how data is gathered, analysed and how that information is leveraged to drive decisions.
Data unavailability will certainly not be a problem in the future. Still, vision and maturity inside healthcare organisations to operate and make decisions based on that data will be the key to pursue the goals of delivering effective care by simultaneously reducing costs and improving patient experience and their access to services.
Digital health – the fuel of data-driven healthcare
If data is behind the wheels of the decisions, then digitisation processes are the fuel that enables them to set in motion in the first place. In other words, it is impossible to make data-driven decisions without having the processes digitalised, which will allow the collection of accurate data effectively.
Digital health (or eHealth) is the first step towards data-driven healthcare. In the last few decades, the healthcare industry has come a long way with the widespread adoption of digital solutions for various processes within organisations – from EHRs, telemedicine to AI-enabled medical devices. There are already examples of good practices in healthcare, where digitalisation and data-driven decisions have improved clinical, financial, operational performance and care delivery.
Multidisciplinary Team Meetings: a golden standard to reduce cancer care inequalities
One bright example of digitalisation and telemedicine to improve care services are Multidisciplinary Team Meetings (MDTs), also known as Multidisciplinary case conferences or Tumour boards, where best specialists cross-institutions collaborate to make the best decisions about future patient care. MDTs are the golden standard in contemporary cancer care, and the adoption of digital solutions now enables virtual MDTs by connecting regional experts through digital solutions such as Vitaly Multidisciplinary Team Meetings.
But how can you tell if your MDT process is running successfully?
Overall, the benefits of digitisation have been widely discussed and understood. However, due to the complexity of the processes and the number of different medical professionals and organisations involved, these benefits often remain presumed at the level of subjective impressions rather than derived from concrete metrics and data analysis. This makes it challenging to identify progress or potential pitfalls and analyse them at the root. Therefore, when implementing a new digital solution with the goal of optimising a process or service, it is crucial that you ensure you have a way of collecting data and monitoring benefits in an intuitive and self-explanatory manner.
Healthcare analytics – you can’t improve what you don’t measure
Each new digital solution represents another source of data that needs to be analysed and acted upon. The increasing amount of data flowing through the organisation can quickly become overwhelming, and consequently, only a fraction of it ends up converted into information. Using analytics and utilising digital dashboards with real-time data from applications, data-driven decisions are easier to reach as the data is already transformed into a condensed, dynamic, visual report of metrics. Presenting data in such a way makes it easier to keep track of KPIs, trends, and progress on a high level, and on the other hand, it enables to drill down into details and search for correlations, all at one place.
To continue with the example of digitally enabled MDTs and their benefits, and step away from generalizing, the following use cases show how analytical dashboards works in practice.
Three use cases of using MDT analytics dashboards to support data-driven decisions
- Organisations collaborating in regional MDTs want to determine the reasons behind the rescheduling of patients when the tumour board has already started. Using the dashboard, they can access the data and point out the most common reasons behind it. Then, according to the data, they can make decisions that will reduce the occurrence of rescheduling (better planning of scheduling, increased time slots per patient …).
- Organisations want insights into whether the benefit of reducing the number of per-patient discussions has been achieved. Using the dashboard, they can access how many discussions were needed on average and get additional insights into why certain groups needed more meetings than expected.
- Organisations want to determine which cancer groups need the most time to discuss their patients on the tumour board to achieve treatment recommendations. Using the dashboard, they can access the information of each tumour type, potentially spot any exceeding results, and therefore optimally plan and schedule the tumour boards in the future.
A step beyond – predictive analytics
So far, we’ve delved into the advantages of collecting data and visualising it on dashboards to utilise them to rationalize benefits and improve strategies. However, many unlocked healthcare data analytics potential remains in predictive analytics, an advanced technique of data-driven decisions. With the constant data flow from the application, the added value lies in harnessing this data through machine-learning techniques to identify patterns and trends and make predictions about particular outcomes. This branch is pivotal to moving the healthcare industry forward – to make better and more informed decisions.
Data will talk to you if you’re willing to listen to it
The healthcare industry, like all others, is becoming drastically influenced by data. Digitalised services and processes are being adopted, and they are serving organisations with a wealth of data. Therefore, the key is to be aware of its value and invest in knowledge of how to turn it into insights and insights into actions that will change healthcare for the better.
Katja Valjavec,
Data Scientist @ Parsek