Healthcare Business Intelligence
Technology is changing the way we live our lives almost every day and in a multitude of different ways. One of these transformations is occurring in the field of healthcare. Health is a business that has been around for centuries with modern medicine helping to extend the average lifespan by decades, however, new innovations are set to make this whole process significantly more user friendly and useful.

Business intelligence itself is a fairly new innovation and refers to the collection and use of data to improve business operations and strategic planning. Healthcare business intelligence builds on this same framework but in this case, the data in question is patient data gathered through a variety of channels. Healthcare BI has a slightly different purpose than that explored earlier with business intelligence alone. With healthcare business intelligence, organizations are still looking for ways of improving operations and costs, but a greater primary focus is the goal of improving patient care.

Healthcare Analytics as a Business

While patient care is a primary mandate for healthcare BI tools and software, businesses entering the market have the potential of realizing a very healthy return on their investment. In 2019 the market was already fairly robust at US$14 billion, but this is set to skyrocket over the coming years with a healthcare analytics market expected to reach US$50.5 billion by 2024.

This investment is expected to primarily focus on North America with Europe a distant second followed quite closely by Asia. Over the coming years specifically, North America by itself will far surpass the current global investment of US$14 billion. This growth is fueled by a variety of factors, one of which is a growing focus from the government towards a more personalized provision of medical care.

Benefits of BI in Healthcare

While there are many reasons to embrace healthcare BI there are also some clearly obvious benefits that need to be called out.

Reduced Costs

In many parts of the world, including North America, healthcare is a business. While doctors and clinicians got into the role to help people, money is still a driver that needs to be acknowledged. Running a medical practice or hospital is expensive with resource costs, tools, equipment, and pharmaceuticals all adding up. However, clinical business intelligence tools can help drive these costs down in a variety of different ways.

Healthcare BI software can track populations and perform analysis to better understand the likelihood of illness and infection in specific areas and locations. Healthcare BI tools can improve communication and information sharing between different organizations and even between countries.

Turning a Doctor into a Data Scientist

BI tools can be complicated and complex to use and understand. However as healthcare itself has transformed, so have the BI tools that support healthcare. Now doctors and other healthcare experts have a means of extracting information in a simple manner, without requiring an understanding of coding or databases.

Self-service tools make front line staff more efficient and effective. They let healthcare providers access information in real-time to improve their ability to make decisions and judgments in a more timely manner. In addition, these self-service tools allow simple customization so that patients too can understand the information being presented.

Personalized Treatment Services

In years gone by, patient treatment was a matter of best guess more than anything. As time progressed and information was shared between physicians, researchers, and clinicians about what worked and did not work when it came to treatments for specific illnesses and disease, better treatment options were discovered and refined.

Health data intelligence helps take that a step further and helps doctors understand why a treatment that worked for one patient might or might not be suitable for another. Business analytics in healthcare can be further refined to demonstrate the risks of specific treatments based on a patient’s current condition and medication. Now treatments can be personalized based on specific genetic blueprints targeting treatments in a more concrete manner.

Evaluating Caregivers

Healthcare is a business as already mentioned and one of the precepts of business is the service provided to customers. Within healthcare, those customers are the patients that engage with the doctor or medical facility. These patients are concerned not only with how they are treated while in the facility, but the information they receive, how much empathy is or is not shown in the given situation and more.

Like reviews for restaurants, healthcare providers too can be reviewed by patients and this information gathered through different tools. Clinical business intelligence software can evaluate information on the carers within their organization and use this information to further improve the services they provide to patients.

Improving Patient Satisfaction

Health BI has multiple impacts on patient satisfaction. Better and more customized treatment ensures that patients receive targeted services focused on their specific illnesses or condition. Customized treatment options drive improved patient outcomes, leading to overall better quality of life. In addition, clinical and hospital business intelligence helps make the facilities themselves more efficient and effective improving wait times and overall service levels.

Healthcare BI Tools

Healthcare BI software is a subset of BI software targeted towards the healthcare market. These tools provide specialists in the medical field with an improved way of reviewing data gathered from different sources. These sources could include patient files and medical records but can be expanded to include additional information such as financial records and more, to better enable the facility in their care and treatment planning. Healthcare BI tools integrate with other software in a medical establishment but it is crucial to understand that it is not the same as software like EMR and EHR.

Tableau

One of the leaders in the BI marketplace, Tableau helps organizations create and publish dashboards extremely easily. Tableau has some inbuilt data preparation tools that simplify the process of gaining information. Tableau also has some prepared templates for users in the healthcare market which helps even further with implementation letting organizations quickly drill down into their information.

Power BI

Power BI is a Microsoft product and as such is very familiar to users of the Office solution. It integrates directly with other Microsoft products also like Excel and SharePoint and lets users analyze, model, and graphically represent data in a variety of different dashboards and reports. Power BI is fairly intuitive and easy to use with a built-in AI engine that lets users analyze clinical data quickly and easily.

Sisense

Sisense like Tableau has dedicated integrations for the healthcare market. However, Sisense takes it perhaps a step further with a healthcare analytics module built specifically for healthcare information and data. Sisense lets you pipe data in from a variety of different data sources so you integrate all of the different touchpoints in a single interactive dashboard.

NIX Experience In Healthcare BI

As a leader in software development, NIX was contracted to build a solution for a global organization. This company was looking for a way of improving the information available to company executives. Executives were interested in the visualization of specific indicators related to finance, quality of care, and clinical services.

The NIX team used data from multiple different applications to determine the key areas that needed to be measured. They determined that the best path forward was the use of Tableau as a solution. Tableau was visually appropriate and integrated with all of the systems but also provided the security that the organization needed in terms of patient information.

NIX worked with Tableau extensively and also implemented a separate Java-based component to further improve security and authentication. In addition, another component was added which improved the scheduling of data extracts. The NIX team successfully built a solution in a very short timeframe that met all of the client requirements, leading to a successful product launch shortly thereafter. If you are interested in healthcare business intelligence and are looking for a partner with experience for your project, contact us. At NIX we understand the business of software and healthcare and can help you ensure that you are a success at both.
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['Healthcare Technology', 'Software Development', 'Healthcare', 'Nix', 'Business Intelligence']