News Feature | July 14, 2014

Predictive Analytics Still Growing

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Predictive Analytics

Despite advances in electronic healthcare predictive analytics, experts say it’s still in its infancy.

According to a report published by Health Affairs, widespread use and implementation of electronic healthcare predictive analytics (eHPA) is still in its infancy. Authors of the study say that while they hope to one day see eHPA in widespread use at the point of care and aiding in real-time clinical decision making, it’s currently not at that point.

“There are already many implementations across many hospitals in the country and across the world,” says study co-author Bin Xie in Modern Healthcare. “It could grow into a big, giant adult, so, when we compare it to its potential, it's still in its infancy.”

According to iHealth Beat, eHPA has four components: Data acquisition, risk-prediction model validation, real-time applications, and scaling up the model for wider implementation in the healthcare sector.

Challenges that will need to be addressed before widespread use of eHPA can be made a reality include:

  • Allowing the program to grow and respond to daily events;
  • Engaging stakeholders, including patient consent;
  • Ensuring the quality of data;
  • Establishing an appropriate oversight mechanism;
  • Interoperability of any relevant technology platform;
  • Patient privacy protections; and
  • Risk model transparency.

“We think in five to 10 years, it could really become a big thing in healthcare, especially when we address the difficulty of containing costs and improving the quality of care and the challenge of the growth in the number of senior citizens,” Xie said.