use of big data in healthcare

Deliver better healthcare through effective use of secure mobile messaging

In an increasingly data-driven environment, healthcare business intelligence companies are offering hospitals the health IT tools they need to participate in value-based care, population health management, and operational analytics.

Business intelligence (BI) tools allow providers to glean actionable insights from large amounts of data and use those insights to improve a wide range of organizations processes, from performance management to workflow automation.

As the growing trend of hospital mergers and acquisitions looms over a quickly changing regulatory and reimbursement landscape, healthcare organizations are under strong pressure to adopt up-to-date EHRs and implement the latest health IT systems to maintain market share and meet care quality goals.

Business intelligence tools designed to extract insights from big data stores offer providers a way to monitor and improve their organization’s quality and cost efficiency. The following is a list, in alphabetical order, of the top healthcare business intelligence companies by implementation count, based on information from Definitive Healthcare. Acmeware, Inc.

Developed as a solution for MEDITECH’s Data Repository, Acmeware is designed to analyze large swaths of clinical data spanning years of healthcare delivery, including data gathered during physician visits, outpatient care, and inpatient stays. Acmeware also possesses the analytics capabilities to categorize and assess data for chronic disease management, care management, and financial performance modeling. The vendor currently works in tandem with MEDITECH to offer report development and support services for over 50 hospitals and health systems.

Datawatch

Datawatch specializes in self-service data preparation and complementary solutions for self-service analytics tools. The twenty-year-old vendor aims to provide organizational support to allow healthcare organizations to spend less time on data preparation and more on quality and cost improvements. Datawatch prioritizes simplifying the process of BI through user-friendly solutions allowing users to directly interact with available data. The vendor’s solutions can also be deployed at any required scale. Datawatch Monarch specifically offers clinicians access to financial, clinical, and operational system data.

Epic Systems

Epic Systems provides BI tools to support big data functions in hospitals, including clinical workflow optimization, clinical decision support, population health management, predictive analytics, and financial performance modeling. Epic’s Clarity database allows hospitals to run data-intensive reports well-suited to analyzing and managing large quantities of data and integrating data into other systems.

GetWellNetwork

GetWellNetwork offers healthcare organizations access to actionable data and data management through its Management Console. GetWellNetwork is currently the largest interactive patient care provider for the VA, aiding in patient engagement. GetWellNetwork also provides hospitals with monthly performance reporting on the status and support of its IT installations to allow staff to evaluate problems and determine solutions for improvements. The vendor also provides hospitals with comparative performance data showing how their organizations stack up to other hospitals.

Inovalon

Inovalon provides cloud-based platforms to facilitate hospitals in the transition from volume to value-based care models. The vendor specializes in leveraging large-scale data interconnectivity capabilities, proprietary data sets, analytics capabilities, and data-driven intervention systems to optimize various aspects of hospital management. Inovalon enables providers to assess and improve clinical and quality outcomes and financial performance across their hospital system. The vendor services many different healthcare stakeholders, including health plans and pharmaceutical companies. Inovalon currently provides actionable insights for almost 500 healthcare organizations and 856,000 physicians in 375,000 clinical facilities.

MEDHOST

MEDHOST’s business intelligence solutions provide applications for financial, clinical, operational, and regulatory data reporting. The modular, interoperable platform provides scalable solutions covering over 600 key performance indicators (KPIs) surrounding regulatory reporting and compliance. MEDHOST also provides support for mobile analytics as well as on-premise or cloud-based deployments. The vendor’s BI solutions recently passed ONC’s 2015 Edition Certified EHR Technology Program to meet CMS Meaningful Use Stage 3 requirements.

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employee healthcare data security awareness: top industry threat

A recent study conducted by HIMSS Analytics found that lacking employee education and awareness are top healthcare data security threats.

Approximately 80 percent of surveyed health IT executives and professionals report that employee security awareness is their greatest concern regarding healthcare data security.

The 2017 Level 3 Healthcare Security Study was conducted by HIMSS Analytics and sponsored by Level 3 Communications, Inc. HIMSS interviewed 125 individuals who worked in or alongside the IT department at a healthcare provider organization.

Half of the respondents – 49 percent – were a director or manager of IT, while 30 percent were listed as IT security officers or other IT positions.

Exposure from partners or third-parties was the top concern for nearly 69 percent of those surveyed, followed by securing wireless or BYOD devices (54 percent of respondents) and a lack of actionable intelligence (36 percent of respondents).

HIMSS Analytics Senior Director of Research Services Bryan Fiekers maintained that security “cannot become an out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem."

“While the research uncovered only a 'modest' concern around the prospect of a security breach within hospital organizations over the next 12 months, providers are looking for closer partnerships with their network providers,” Fiekers said in a statement. “My interpretation of the findings is that healthcare organizations must remain vigilant against cyber security threats and leverage all of their resources effectively to ensure every individual knows their role.”

Competing priorities and budget concerns were listed as the top barriers in adopting a comprehensive security program, with 79 percent and 74 percent of respondents citing them respectively.

Impact to clinical workflows, employee awareness and training, and in-house expertise were also top five security program barriers.

One-third of respondents also said they had a high level of concern towards a breach impacting patient care at their organization, according to the survey. Respondents were asked to rank their level of concern on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being “no concern at all,” while 7 was a “high level of concern.”

Approximately one-quarter of those surveyed ranked their concern as a 6, while 12 percent said their concern was a level .

The majority of organizations are employing multiple practices to mitigate data security risk. Eighty-seven percent of those surveyed said they utilize remote access/secure access controls, with nearly 85 percent reporting their organization uses internal/employee security awareness program.

Security consulting services (i.e. vulnerability assessment, penetration testing), next-gen firewall (i.e. sandboxing, data loss prevention, application control), and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation were also listed by over half of responses as a mitigation technique.

When it comes to protecting the organization from potential data breaches, 34 percent of respondents said they use Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI). Just over 31 percent said their organization uses next-gen firewall, and 27 percent stated their entity utilizes DDoS mitigation for mitigating breaches.

Level 3 Global Security Services SVP Chris Richter explained that healthcare data security threats are only going to continue to increase as bad actors keep seeking out PHI.

“Aside from fostering and maintaining a culture of security, which includes regular employee security training, healthcare organizations should implement a security governance framework and appropriate technology controls,” Richter said in a statement. “These include threat intelligence, DDoS mitigation and next generation firewalling and sandboxing – all critical next steps for healthcare providers to secure their networks."

As healthcare providers look to implement necessary security techniques, employee training and regular education cannot be overlooked.

The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) and CyberScout found in a survey released earlier this year that one of the leading causes for healthcare data breaches was employee error or negligence.

There were 43 reported incidents that exposed 1,183,893 records, the report found. In comparison, the second leading sector for employee negligence was the government/military, which had 14 breaches and exposed 35,800 records.

“With the click of a mouse by a naïve employee, companies lose control over their customer, employee and business data,” CyberScout CEO and Vice Chair of IRTC’s Board of Directors Matt Cullina said. “In an age of an unprecedented threat, business leaders need to mitigate risk by developing C-suite strategies and plans for data breach prevention, protection and resolution."

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big data, Iot-driven apps set to reform healthcare

Medical Apps powered by Big Data and Internet of Things can help doctors share best practices as well as treat patients internationally. The Apps generally combine live streaming and instant messaging and networking in a secure environment. Direct and double encrypted conversations among doctors can be achieved through these state-of-the-art Applications. Encryption ensures the privacy of interactions, even as a patient receives the best medical advice and care. Healthcare professionals using the Apps are put through a credentials check before being admitted into the system.

The Apps can be revolutionary: A doctor with Medicines sans Frontieres (MSF) in war-ridden Syria can coordinate and operate together with a surgeon based in California to treat a rocket blast the victim through live streaming. It does sound incredible. This is where medical science and modern technology such as Big Data Analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) are headed for.

Cloud-based Big Data Apps can provide crucial information on the go
Big Data Apps provide access to an interactive educational library featuring training courses, live streams, huge volume of research along with in-house virtual reality, points of view, and augmented reality productions. Such features allow physicians to run through millions and millions of research papers and genetic sequencing data, conduct high-speed analysis, sift through innumerous treatment records globally, delivering insights into treatment of patients with a specific DNA sequence or specific blood group. Medical personnel can benchmark patients with past occurrences, analyzing how patients with particular genes respond to specific treatments, enabling them to make decisions based on facts, not mere judgment.

Organizations like MDLinking are building doctor networks across the world including medical colleges and not-for-profit healthcare institutions like the Aga Khan Development Network, Partners in Health and Doctors Without Borders.

Such mobile phone applications are designed so as to leverage the device’s storage to build usable offline functionality that can be used in case of low Internet connectivity in places like war zones, rural areas, or places struck by disaster. The Apps are different from Web applications in that they don’e need a continuous Internet connection. Offline functionality allows the Apps to connect to Cloud-based applications and retrieve data when internet connectivity is available. For example, online medical articles and journals can be accessed even if there is no Internet connection or when connection is intermittent or periodic.

“Big Data Analytics can provide physicians and doctors the opportunity to dig deep into data and device novel treatments, which may have escaped them before,” said Shashank Dixit, CEO, Deskera, a cloud provider with a Big Data Application.

Bringing high quality healthcare to the Third World and developing countries
Billions around the world, particularly in developing and underdeveloped countries with low incomes, suffer due to absence of proper healthcare. India ranks low on the World Health Organization’s list of global healthcare systems. A huge chunk of Indian population is still outside the ambit of health services. In such cases collective medical knowledge will help in providing health services to the 5 billion people in Asia and Africa with little access to healthcare.

The technology would be especially helpful in such settings as it would remove the resources spent transporting patients from one health institution to another. Medical professionals from across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the USA are signing up for such Apps. The day may not be far when a patient in Kampala will be operated by surgeons spread over California, Sidney, and Cairo.

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