Ensuring high-quality patient care for Americans remains a top priority for the government and health care providers alike. As such, effectively using data to better manage the healthcare system and deliver the best treatment will only become more critical — especially as the number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to more than double from 46 million today to over 98 million by 2060, and the population overall is set to increase exponentially over the next 30 years.
What does the future healthcare landscape potentially look like in the United States? And how can better data collection, mining and analysis contribute to better healthcare?
The Health Story Project has found that approximately 1.2 billion clinical documents are produced in the United States each year, which is about 60 percent of all clinical data. However, this massive amount of rich and unstructured data is currently being underutilized in today’s computer-based record systems.
The way forward is digital care transformation toward a connected healthcare delivery model. While organizations have access to unprecedented amounts of healthcare information that can revolutionize treatment, getting the right data and turning that “deluge” of data into personalized, actionable insights remains a challenge. Only through a combination of strategic approaches — involving advancements in mobility, automation, intelligence, information sharing and more — will we be able to improve healthcare outcomes for all.
Tomorrow’s connected healthcare delivery model
The connected healthcare system of tomorrow will be a mix of elements: hands-on patient treatment, remote monitoring and telehealth through various devices, and population health analytics, where health providers use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to inform personalized health and wellness pathways. But in order to get there, healthcare providers, tech companies and patients must join forces to find ways to better capture and extract all the data available — including patient data, patient satisfaction scores, insurance data, billing information, and patient website behavior — to determine the right treatment plans for improving patient care, reducing readmits and reducing costs.
Technology is creating new opportunities for efficiencies and performance in healthcare, which is under pressure to innovate and reduce costs while still improving quality of care. Per the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as of 2016, the United States spent $9,832 per person on healthcare, versus $4,003 per person for a comparable country average — an almost twofold difference.[1] Yet, among comparable countries, the U.S. still has the highest rates of deaths amenable to healthcare.[2]
This is largely due to inefficiencies in the current system in delivery, pricing and value of care. Over the past eight years, there has been a major push to move to a more outcomes-based care system, away from the current system of fee-for-service (FFS). In other words, there is momentum to move from a method in which doctors and other healthcare providers are paid per service, which incentivizes providing more services, to a value- or outcomes-based care system, where providers are paid based on metrics for the quality of care they provide to people.
In an effort to curtail rising costs without sacrificing quality of care, healthcare organizations need to take on more financial risk, understand their costs better, and manage the care of their communities better: To do this, they must become more innovative, and find new ways to attack these problems. This can only be done through an increased focus on properly capturing and using data from the communities around them.
Top five ways to drive healthcare innovation
Many of today’s problems will be difficult to resolve if healthcare providers don’t have the resources available to collect and analyze all of the necessary data in a valuable way.
To make sure this doesn’t happen, here are the top five things healthcare organizations can do today to continue driving innovation that will position them for success in the future:
1. Identify objectives, personnel and resource needs
Determine what initiatives you will start out with, and where to apply new technologies and tools to get the greatest return. For example, machine learning is becoming an indispensable tool in our efforts to improve healthcare outcomes and reduce costs, such as reducing the number of diabetes re-admissions. But do you have the capability to do this type of work now, or do you have gaps?
2. Work with a trusted advisor
Often less expensive than building out full-time staff, finding a trusted advisor who can address your specific needs — whether you are a payer, provider, government health agency, life sciences organization or medical distributor — can help accelerate your digital health transformation by providing the required services, solutions and expertise.
3. Partner with the community
Progressive healthcare systems are expanding their influence beyond the physical campus and establishing partnerships with patient and community organizations and government agencies. Patients are becoming savvier regarding their health, self-organizing face-to-face and using technology to manage themselves and each other. Stronger ties with communities improve wellness, expand services and increase access to quality care.
Additionally, social determinants of health and online activity such as air quality, proximity to drinking water, economic activity and social media presence and engagement can be used to make real-time predictions about hospital emergency room admissions and population health.
4. Look to higher education
Health networks looking to invest in data analytics research and development can benefit from working directly with students looking to gain data science experience and credibility, while the combined funding can help minimize the effects of budget cuts for both parties. Groups such as the American Medical Informatics Association are working on initiatives to get budding academic data scientists some real-world experience, for improved job prospects in the future.
5. Change the approach to care
Traditionally, providers have used the parental[3] model to communicate with patients as well as other stakeholders, as providers have always been perceived to have the closest relationship with patience and the most knowledge and experience at the time of the provider-patient interaction. Now, with the proliferation of information and mobile devices, this is no longer the case: All stakeholders wish to be better informed as to options and rationale for specific healthcare decisions.
Providers must change their approach, as well, to that of an advisor — sharing data bi-directionally, simplifying the facts for patients and explaining the available options. Similarly, new solutions such as digital health apps must also simplify complex healthcare concepts into frameworks patients can understand and work successfully within.
For example, the use of consumer- or gaming-style approaches for personal healthcare apps makes interactions with patients more effective and also helps provide tangible, engaging and motivating feedback for health practitioners. Gamified health tracking keeps the patient motivated to stay on the appropriate therapy path, and it is also used in some telehealth programs to educate patients, health workers and the general population.
The problems within healthcare are vast, and they are changing too rapidly to use old frameworks to solve them. Providers who are willing to adopt new open frameworks that will allow them to pivot quickly with the market will be the most successful in the future.
[3] http://www.antoniocasella.eu/salute/Emanuel_1992.pdf
George T. Mathew, MD, MBA, FACP is the Chief Medical Officer, North America at DXC Technology, a leading independent, end-to-end IT services and solutions company, helping clients harness the power of innovation to thrive on change. With domain expertise across the fields of healthcare, finance, technology and operational effectiveness, Dr. Mathew is helping DXC’s healthcare customers lead the way forward through digital care transformation toward a connected healthcare delivery model.
