The Year Of Data Value And The Game Changers Making It A Reality
By David Dimond, Chief Technology Officer and Distinguished Engineer, Global Healthcare, Dell EMC
Healthcare is at a crossroads. On one hand, our 2016 multi-industry analysis revealed healthcare continues to be a laggard when it comes to digital transformation investments. On the other, healthcare data is growing at a startling 48 percent increase per year, a rate far beyond most other industries.
Arguably, healthcare has the most to gain from realizing clinical, operational, and financial value from all of this data. The challenge remains how to best take the sheer volume of data and transform it into timely, meaningful, and actionable intelligence from bench to bedside.
There are a number of game changers that will help our industry transition successfully toward the next generation of predictive analytics with the ability to link and correlate this valuable data in new ways for operational efficiencies, patient care delivery, and clinical research.
1. The Increase Of Data Scientists
While improved data management tools play a large role in gathering, analyzing, and collaborating data, providers need to glean insights much faster to improve population health and personalized medicine. Pressure is being put on IT to introduce efficient processes for providing insights and healthcare administrators need to gain the professional skillsets to manage these systems, solutions, and data.
Now more than ever, a readiness and an eagerness exists amongst healthcare organizations to hire data scientists to assume this role, given the disruptive impacts data science is having across other industries. With more data specialists on board, healthcare providers will see greater collaboration between data-generating research and clinical organizations, creating a new era for precision medicine.
Data science is evolving as a new core competency, both for the creation of medical evidence and as an accelerant for business transformation. These analytic capabilities are critical to achieving advanced clinical research initiatives.
2. Machine Learning Advancements Will Lead To New Standardization
The need for faster data aggregation is simply outweighing our human capacity to translate this information effectively. Automation and machine learning are becoming fundamental to healthcare organizations as machines can process the vast amounts of data — including medical records and images — quicker than any single clinician, as well as identify information that matches diagnoses.
The availability of software technologies fueled by cost-effective deep technologies, such as GPUs, is now enabling practical use of machine learning and similar technologies within radiology and pathology, and genomics will quickly follow suit.”
The new rule is those organizations that have depth of data will win. Massachusetts General Hospital is proof in point with its new Clinical Data Science Center. With access to more than 2 billion medical images, they are leveraging the latest in AI technology to improve the detection, diagnosis, treatment, and management of diseases. As a result of increased use of these technologies, we’ll start to see more standards, protocols, and best practices put in place to create efficiencies, interoperability, and safety. It’s also not hard to see how other disciplines will use these frameworks as a springboard for adopting similar capabilities.
3. Data Sharing And Collaboration Driving The Rise Of Precision Medicine
The biggest catalyst for precision medicine advancement will be new kinds of partnerships among health systems, academia, and technology providers. Through the introduction and adoption of shared data environments, researchers and caregivers can take advantage of integrated data sets, workflows, and analytics tools leading to more prescriptive diagnosis and treatment.
Currently, more than 40 private-sector organizations have committed to initiatives to help advance the benefits of more precise, personalized medicine for both individuals and populations. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has set up its one million patient cohort database, aiming for voluntary participation from one million patients willing to donate their digital health data for research. The Department of Veterans Affairs has already enrolled 450,000 veterans in its own research cohort. Near the end of 2016, Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act in support of Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot, which includes $1.4 billion in funding for precision medicine.
The vision of precision medicine has grown out of genome sequencing and molecular pathology. The objective is to mine all types of patient-specific data — environment, lifestyle, self-reporting, test results, device monitoring, etc. — to understand how these interrelate, and to develop analytics that can alert clinicians to potential issues and recommend more precise preventive regimens and treatments for all types of conditions. The collaboration and partnerships being forged between health systems, academia, and technology providers will greatly accelerate the pace with which the industry reaches this objective, and at the same time, propelling healthcare consumerism to new heights.
Providers will be expected to use personal data when providing diagnosis, treatment, and recommendations. Healthcare providers will need to address the opportunity (and demand) to serve consumers in a transparent way and with the right tools, or risk losing them as customers.
4. The Influence Of The Real-Time, On-Demand Everything Generation
There are about 76 million millennials in the U.S. who are embracing — even propelling — a world of real-time, on-demand everything. As we’ve seen with other industries, from taxis to retail, startups have the potential to transform the way we do things. This on-demand generation is setting the tone for the future of healthcare, adopting healthcare systems modeled after the likes of Uber, Instacart, and Netflix. We’ll see the rise of major disruptors, including new interfaces for healthcare like that of Teladoc and Doctor on Demand. Anytime, anywhere healthcare will become the expectation as a result of the culture shift that demands immediate, customer-centric, cost-effective, and transparent experiences.
Just as technology is the engine of human progress, it is also an engine of change, transforming the way we live and work at an ever-increasing pace. Healthcare is not immune, and everything from mobile to wearables to infrastructure are infiltrating the industry, forcing its hand in adapting or being overrun.
5. Commitment To Security
As data becomes more pervasive, so does risk. Currently, public and private healthcare organizations are two of the least mature sectors when it comes to digital transformation, and at the same time, 88 percent of ransomware attacks have taken place at hospitals. With stories about ransomware attacks, security breaches, and device hacks becoming ever more prevalent, healthcare organizations cannot afford to ignore customers’ demand for better security of their personal data.
Increasingly, we’re seeing an even greater understanding of the risks of storing all of this data and commitment to creating strategies that are optimized for this type of landscape, including hardening devices, protecting data, access management, multi-layered protection, and adopting intelligent, proactive security.
Healthcare is the number one target for cyberattacks and IDC predicts the industry will see a doubling of advanced ransomware attacks by 2018. These threats go beyond stolen identities, with life-threatening risks associated with medical device hacks. Medjacking is just the latest in what cybersecurity experts are saying could be a backdoor into a health IT system, or more nefarious, a means to inflict harm on the wearer of the device. With a greater understanding of the risks and better multi-layered security from data device encryption to deep-level network protection to best practices when it comes to strategy and governance, more organizations will feel confident in their ability to store, protect and leverage patient data.
So with these game changers of digital disruption across the healthcare industry, we will soon see the rise of data value. Personally, I welcome this evolution. It’s time healthcare took its rightful place as a leader in this digital revolution.