The healthcare industry has always been challenging with the most complexities. When it comes to data, the healthcare industry is one of the top contenders in creating tons of data with processes like patient care, compliance & regulatory requirements, and record-keeping. With the help of big data, the medical industry has grown faster than any other sector. Every decision in this sector is crucial, and any action taken based on the available data can directly impact human life.
To improve precision in the decision-making in this sector, each professional and organization needs to adapt to the latest advancements in technology. Big Data in healthcare industry has made data collection more relevant, faster, and accurate.
As per the report of the International Data Corporation (IDC), at this rate, the healthcare data will go through a 39% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) by the year 2025, which will be the highest of any other industry.
This growth in the amount of data is possible only because of advancements in big data analytics tools, availability of real-time data, and the adoption of new technologies. According to the reports of 2011, the data of the U.S. healthcare system had reached a mark of 145 exabytes and is expected to touch the yottabyte scale if growth continues at the current rate.
When the term Big data in healthcare industry is utilized, it simply refers to the electronic health data sets that are potentially much larger and complex to manage with the conventional software or hardware. These massive sets of data cannot be managed easily with conventional database management systems or methods.
The data collected from the healthcare industry consists of physician’s written notes, prescriptions, laboratory, medical imaging, insurance, pharmacy, and various other administrative data. There are various electronic health records other than these data sets, and data from the sensor-embedded wearables, drug proportions, etc., are generated in real-time.
The implementation of this technology has revolutionized the healthcare sector to such an extent that every hospital and the pharma companies have started relying on it to effectively communicate the findings from a continuously growing pool of data. In this blog, we have listed eight ways big data analytics is changing the healthcare industry.
1. Limiting Human Errors
Every life is precious, and many incidents have caused the loss of life due to human errors. These errors are caused in the form of wrong medication prescription, missing appointments, wrong treatments, etc. These human errors can cause grave consequences, including loss of life. Some errors are common due to a large amount of data processing being handled manually.
Big data in healthcare industry is helping in reducing these human errors and saving lives by organizing and handling these enormous piles of data. There is software that can monitor the flow of data being collaborated on patients from different medical professionals. In case of any prescription mistake, it generates a red flag that helps in reducing the errors. Smart wearables used in live monitoring of the patient’s vitals are continually monitoring for any errors.
2. Growth of Healthcare Data Pool
Medical records of the patients are needed to be digitalized so that documents like medical imagery, past treatment, and screening results can be moved into cloud storage. Digitalizing this enormous pool of medical data will help professionals of the healthcare industry share the necessary bits of it for the purpose of academics, research, and diagnosis purposes.
This process will not only help in immediate patient care but will also support the design and development of ultra-modern surgical equipment. With the help of experts offering healthcare technology consulting services, it’s easy to learn how machine learning and predictive algorithms can aid in handling massive data pools with ease. This has been made possible by analyzing the demographic data to read specific patterns. However, it would have taken years of research to manage this data without Artificial Intelligence and Big Data analytics.
3. Health Tracking
Some complications can be avoided with the right set of data. Before turning to aggravate issues, every healthcare organization tries to identify possible complications. In numerous cases, it has been observed that due to lack of data, the medical system has not been able to avoid the possible complications that can be prevented easily. Health tracking of patients is one of the benefits of the Internet of Things and this revolutionary technology.
Numerous health facilities across the world are now using these new sets of technologies to monitor vital statistics and medical records of a patient. The characteristics of a patient, such as the heart rate, sleep habits, blood pressure, and glucose levels, can be monitored by their assigned physicians with ease by the use of medical innovations. With the tracking of these characteristics, doctors can help patients in preventing the development of many chronic diseases and conditions and assure timely treatment.
Health tracking technologies help physicians in preventing various unpleasant situations, which is the ultimate goal of their profession. With constant monitoring of the patient’s vitals, these technologies can help in raising the alarm in case of any unwanted situation. These things are now easy to use because of these revolutionary technologies in the healthcare industry and will pursue to evolve in the coming years.
4. Inhibit Fraudulent Billing
Patients are often charged in the name of services that have never been delivered to them by the hospital. This can be avoided with the use of Big data in healthcare industry and linking the data sets of a hospital to social or public data. Patients are now taking their billing options to the next level with the use of this advanced technology and discovering the unnecessary treatments and medications that have never been delivered to them.
To analyze the claim of a patient, it uses the diagnosis, procedures, past treatments, and patient demographics. It is now easy to detect and inspect doctors that claim funds for unnecessary medication and treatments with outlier detection analysis. Patients can report these overcharged bills and get their refund after a full investigation.
5. Reducing Cost
Ineffective finance management is the major drawback of various hospitals, medical colleges, and clinics, and due to this, they have to face an intense amount of financial hardship sometimes. However, this problem has been solved by numerous health care institutions, practitioners, and hospitals with the use of predictive analysis. The Healthcare industry is now cutting this loss by utilizing predictive analytics and reducing their investment rate whenever necessary to optimize them.
Big data in healthcare industry is being used by everyone, whether it is medical institutions or hospitals, or even small clinics. The primary benefactor, in this case, is the insurance sector. They are backing up innovative wearable technologies and health trackers to prevent any overstay of their clients in the hospitals. Tracking these signs not only benefits them but also benefits the patient as this revolutionary technology shortens their wait time to receive the required medical care.
Apart from all these factors, it will also help in managing the inventory of available beds and staff in the hospitals. Patients and medical institutions will mutually benefit from it.
6. Enhanced Patient Engagement
The majority of times, when you go to a hospital, you will find that you are not being involved in the process of your treatment. You will be needed only at the time of consultation and at the time of discharge. Big data is changing these things, as per research; the use of this technology and new treatment models are helping the patients directly getting involved in their treatment process and know every step of the treatment carried out on them. This can be used to motivate each patient to be more health-conscious and pursue a healthier lifestyle.
With these intelligent wearable devices, you can now monitor your vital signs anywhere such as, steps are taken in a day, sleeping patterns, heart rate, etc. The intelligent device industry has made a ton of progress in developing these easy-to-use devices that have made a large number of people take a keen interest in monitoring their vital signs that were earlier only monitored by the hospitals.
Patients can track these vital stats about their body anytime with these smart devices without any physician being present. This process helps the patients in becoming active and lead a healthy lifestyle and monitor any changes that can be of any health concern. This can save them a lot of time and money spent on various tests.
7. High-risk Patient Care
It is often observed that the cost of healthcare rises up in case of any complications and emergency care. As the healthcare cost rises, patients often don’t receive the necessary care, and these factors contribute to the demand of changing the way medical professionals work. When you have all the data of the existing patients stored electronically, it is easy to identify patient patterns and reduce any harmful complications. Medical facilities with these technologies have shown a lesser number of a patient visiting their emergency room.
Big data has proven to be helpful in delivering appropriate treatment strategies and the diagnosis of patients with chronic health issues. Customized treatment approaches are being offered to patients with high-risk problems to monitor and treat them according to their needs and avoid any unwanted situation during the course of treatment.
When you have a shortage or inadequate amount of data about a patient’s medical history, creating a custom treatment can be difficult. Big data in the healthcare industry have proven to be crucial in the health sector.
8. Promoting Clinical Research to Invent New Treatment Methods
The generic process of developing any new clinical method of treatment is to conduct clinical trials. These trials help in developing and testing various new treatments that include new medicines and operation procedures. To conduct these trials, the researchers are required to monitor a large number of volunteers or test subjects for their relevant data such as individual EHR information, habits, medical records history, genetic details, allergies, and data relevant to the research being conducted.
While conducting research, keeping track of this massive pile of data with the manual process is almost impossible. It would be challenging for researchers to find any correlations between these sets of data if handled manually. Big Data analytics can be implemented to analyze specific patterns and correlations that will result in efficient assessing of the data and retrieve relevant results from those data sets.
Researchers can analyze the data from the test subjects or the volunteers and verify them against their hypotheses before coming to any conclusion about the effectiveness of a drug or a medical procedure. Using big data in the healthcare industry will help in developing new treatment methods and can be commercialized quickly that will benefit both the healthcare institutions and the patients.
Conclusion
Big data analytics possess the potential to implement a considerable transformation in the healthcare industry. Using the new technologies, health care professionals can make intelligent decisions by getting insights from their clinical and various other data repositories.
As big data analytics will make its way deeper into the health sector, issues like maintaining privacy, security of the data, establishing standards, and improving technologies will gain huge attention. Today, this revolutionary technology and the applications concerned with it that are present in healthcare are at a developing stage that can be termed as embryonic. But in the forthcoming future, it will be a game-changer.
These are the points that depict how this advanced technology is changing the healthcare industry. To implement technologies like this, you should look for a trusted technology partner. At Matellio, we are always ready to assist you with your ventures. With our vast professional experience and access to ultra-modern technologies and tools, we can assure you that we deliver the state-of-the-art digital transformation process available in the market. Our team of proficient engineers and certified healthcare experts are known to deliver flawlessly engineered and cost-effective software solutions/mobile app catering as per your needs. Get in touch with us over any concerns regarding Big Data and AI services in your healthcare sector.
