BI & Analytics Tools Will Put The Meaning In Meaningful Use

By Shahid N. Shah, The Healthcare IT Guy, www.healthcareguy.com
Twitter: @ShahidNShah

Meaningful Use (MU) entered our lexicon over the last few years centered on EHR software as if the usage of an application was important. Of course MU’s goal is about meaningfully using EHRs to collect and analyze clinically valuable data that will improve patient outcomes. The grand MU experiment will fail unless it produces actionable data that allows EHRs to be more than retrospective document and record-keeping systems.

In 2013, we’re going to see the merging of cloud, business intelligence (BI), analytics, and EHR capabilities into solutions that can start to achieve the real intentions of MU: evidence and data driving clinical decisions, not just documenting them. Numerous start-ups and established firms are offering good BI solutions in the cloud, but most of them are weak at being able to take data directly from certified EHRs. We’re going to see that improve this year.

Analytics starts with data but must end in insight or action. A BI solution that has terrific features but can’t integrate seamlessly behind firewalls to reach into PM, financial, lab, and clinical applications isn’t practical or useful. We’re going to see integration service providers jump in and bridge the gap between feature-rich BI systems with transparent data accessibility. The most successful BI implementations this year will be those that allow transactional data to stay in PMs and EHRs, but can federate statistical and correlation data from the transactional systems into the cloud. Going forward, we must be able to seamlessly and securely expose data behind onpremise firewalls and make it queryable and reportable in the cloud.

Many BI projects fail when users are told how valuable they’ll be because they can show dashboards, cool charts, and perform complex event correlations. However, not enough thought is given to the data models, transformations, and data governance necessary to allow the “cool” BI features to work. In 2013, we must see data governance and data integration being elevated from a necessary evil and grunt work to a strategic competency that is clearly identified as the main risk in all BI and analytics projects. Choosing the right BI and tech vendor is certainly important, but no BI functionality will solve the problems of missing, incomplete, or invalid data.