In the Digital Age, the Private sector is investing in some of the best analytic tools to gain deeper insights to make better decisions. When we fail to interpret the data, the consequences can be detrimental.

The future of Analytics as a Service in Healthcare

A struggle within the healthcare industry is breaking down health care silos and connecting patients with doctors. Fragmented care between various sites and doctors is part of the reason for high costs, high resource utilisation and can lead to poor outcomes for the patient. 

By looking at the problem from a different angle, taking in to account the patient to doctor route, there may be a way to improve services and provide both doctors and patients with the resources they need for more effective care. 

The healthcare industry produces huge amounts of data from medical records, medical images to GPs’ notes, personal fitness monitors and even conversations about health in social media. Having the power to access and analyse this data could help recognise people who are at risk and improve healthcare professional's ability to anticipate and treat illnesses. 

This is where Analytics-as-a-Service, starting with the patient, could provide instant feedback and help patients understand their illnesses allowing them to play an active role in managing conditions rather than reacting to symptoms. With wearable technology growing devices can be used to track heart rate, blood pressure, sleep or weight then showing this analysed data to the patient through apps and visualisations so they can see how their health is evolving.  

Data can then be accessed by the doctor or GP not only showing real-time data from wearable technology but combining all data from patient records and history. Analysis and self-service access to all patient's data allows doctors to more effectively diagnose, optimise care and reduce cost.  

By having self-service, controlled access to Analytics-as-a-Service health platforms, with detailed analysis and data visualisations, it gives not only doctors or GPs the full picture but provides an entire care team with the data they need for every stage of patient care. That could include, family, social care, home visits, personal care, A&E admissions, hospital care and much more. Combining all data to a single data hub removing the health care silos connecting patients and doctors.  

Jeroen Tas, chief executive of Connected Care & Health Informatics at Philips, has a vision of the future for connected patients and doctors. “The vision I’m sketching for the future is one where, for instance, a GP uses their tablet ultrasound to make a movie of a patient’s beating heart. When irregularities are noted, the GP shares this immediately with a cardiologist to diagnose the patient and set up a care plan there and then. There’s no need to make an appointment in weeks or months – the issue can be dealt with in real-time.” (source: Telegraph) 

Analytics as a Service in the Private Sector

When Snapchat failed to interpret their Users data it led to an app redesign that was met with intense User scrutiny when it was released in February, ultimately sending the stock down 6%, or $1.5 billion in terms of market cap.

As a result of these risks, the Private Sector is increasing its use of Big Data and analytics for predictive and prescriptive models to improve decision-making, operations and delivery of products and services. This means that Citizen expectations are growing exponentially, and Public budgets are not scaling to match them. Therefore, Public organisations need to look much more closely at their use of data to inform their decisions, in order to continually ensure their on-going value to Citizens. Whilst this has always been a focus for Government, the drastic change in the number of systems and data available for analysis means that traditional resources and spreadsheets cannot keep up.

Despite this challenge, there is also a huge opportunity for organisations to exploit the insight that is available from this increased user and performance data to more accurately assess, and increase, the value of these solutions. In order to do this, Public organisations need to access reports that simply and objectively demonstrate the increasing or decreasing value of a solution in comparison to that of their other services.

Traditionally, this would mean the loss of hundreds of man-hours to data analysis and report generation or, more recently, the equally disruptive and resource heavy adoption of a new reporting system. Both of these solutions only increase the workload of internal resources and require the heavy-lifting of data collection, cleansing and integration to be done, putting the overall organisational value of the reports into question.

Analytics as a Service

To combat this Organisations are now looking to Analytics as a Service. This service simply provides the reports that Organisational leaders, Financial controllers and IT teams need in order to make better decisions and maximise the value of their existing solutions and data. Key Performance Indicators from multiple systems and data sets can be integrated as part of the service, in order to provide the contextualised reports needed for organisations to fully understand their value.

In the ever-changing Digital landscape, organisations with limited budget and resource must maximise the value of their data and focus on gaining available insights with as little impact to Business as Usual as possible. This is where Analytics as a Service can help.

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