Capitalize On Healthcare Data In The Cloud

By Adam Lorant, VP Product and Solutions, PHEMI

Big Data and cloud technologies are transforming almost every industry. With the ability to consolidate much more information from many more sources, organizations are unlocking amazing new insights. Healthcare has been slower to adopt Big Data and the cloud than other industries for many reasons — the biggest being concerns over patient privacy and confidentiality. But the ice is beginning to break, and a growing number of hospitals and healthcare systems are embracing Big Data to transform:

• Clinical operations: Hospitals can now track every aspect of how healthcare is delivered to uncover new efficiencies and optimize quality of care. For example, some hospitals are combining clinical records, operations data, and geospatial data to pinpoint sources of infection.
• Precision medicine: By combining massive amounts of genomic and clinical data, investigators can now predict how patients will respond to certain drug therapies based on their genetic profiles.
• Public health: Some health systems are working with state and local government to combine longitudinal health studies, clinical data, and education data. They’re identifying health issues (such as asthma) that have a bigger impact on student performance than was previously understood to help shape policy.

Healthcare IT leaders are well aware of how much information resides in their organizations, and the enormous potential in using it to fuel new innovations. But getting that data into the hands of people who can use it is easier said than done.

How can organizations with hundreds — sometimes thousands — of disparate databases consolidate all of that information for analysis? And if they do, how will they meet their legal and ethical responsibilities to protect patient information? If all of an organization’s data is accessible, what’s to stop anyone from doing anything they want with it? Finally, how can healthcare organizations implement Big Data technology without taking on a huge, unwieldy, and expensive IT project?

Modern cloud-based Big Data solutions offer answers to all of these questions. They provide a path to start capitalizing on healthcare data to improve patient outcomes and fuel sustained competitive advantage.

Improving Access
Traditional databases are inherently limited in the types and formats of data they can collect. Modern Big Data systems make it possible to consolidate all of an organization’s data — clinical records, documents, even complex unstructured and semi-structured information like imaging studies and genomes — in one place. They catalog that information, automatically applying metadata to everything as it’s collected. This offers two important benefits.

First, analysts and investigators can find what they’re looking for much faster, from a single point of access. Second, many of the barriers associated with the need to protect patient privacy no longer apply. Since researchers are searching through the data catalog rather than raw files, they don’t have to see (or even request access to) protected health information (PHI) or personally identifiable information (PII) when beginning a new study. Instead, they can browse the catalog of allowed information and determine right away if a given record contains what they’re looking for.

Automating Privacy
In healthcare, it’s not enough to assure that a data system is secure — that it uses industry best practices to guard against breaches or data theft. Organizations must ensure patient data is only accessible to the right person, in the right place, at the right time. Historically, that kind of governance required extensive, largely manual procedures to enforce. Modern Big Data systems feature policy frameworks that automate much of that effort.

These systems can govern access not just to a database or even a record, but to specific information contained in that record. So, for example, if a physician wants to access one of her patients’ records, the system can return the full record, including PHI. An analyst conducting a study would also have access to that record but would see only the parts he is authorized to view, and only de-identified information. The system re-purposes and/or de-identifies data for every single request dynamically, based on policy, without the need for out-of-band manual processing.

Simplifying Implementation
Even when healthcare IT leaders recognize the potential of Big Data in their organizations, they may be hesitant to embark on a massive new IT project. Historically, these concerns were warranted. Some healthcare organizations have attempted a do-it-yourself approach, downloading Hadoop only to realize that a whole lot more was needed to build a functional data warehouse. They found themselves with an extensive custom integration project trying to put a hundred different pieces together themselves.

Today, you can choose fully integrated solutions that work out of the box. And with the new generation of integrated healthcare Big Data systems delivered from the cloud, you can implement Big Data systems much faster and operate them at a much lower cost. Cloud platforms offer the full features of a Big Data warehouse without the need to deploy and manage it onsite. In addition, Big Data cloud providers operating “healthcare-grade” clouds fully understand the unique requirements of healthcare IT. They operate data centers that comply with HIPAA regulations and obtain certifications from organizations like HITRUST. And they share responsibility with healthcare organizations for compliance and safeguarding PHI.

Taking The Plunge
If you’re ready to begin capitalizing on your organization’s data, you have many options to get started. Be sure to seek out partners with experience navigating the complexities of healthcare regulatory environments. Choose solutions that feature policy frameworks to automate data privacy and governance, so you can tightly control who can access records, what they see, and in which context. And make sure that the solution provides an in-depth audit trail of every request to demonstrate that PHI and PII are handled appropriately.

When you do, you can give your analysts and investigators the data they need to uncover transformative new insights. You can give patients the confidence that their privacy is protected, even as you use information in more ways. And you can spend less time viewing your data as a burden to be managed, and more as a strategic asset for your organization.

For more information, download the whitepaper Healthcare Big Data in the Cloud.

About The Author
Adam Lorant is the VP Product and Solutions and co-founder of PHEMI Systems, responsible for driving the the product vision and strategy.He works closely with leading healthcare research organizations, healthcare providers, and payer organizations to help them define and implement their big data strategies.