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FEATURE: AI
Across the globe,
healthcare providers are
facing the same questions.
How do we improve
patient care? With growing
populations, how can
we help more people?
Christian Putz, Director,
Emerging, EMEA, Pure
Storage, asks how this can
be achieved especially with
budgets under pressure.
F
inding a solution to these
questions is increasingly
reliant on technology. Now
the good news for healthcare
providers in the region is that
based on findings from a
recent survey, analysts at PwC believe that
the region is positioned to be a first-mover
when it comes to adopting technology to
improve patient care.
However, the responsibility of addressing
these issues and ensuring that technology
can deliver on these promises, is falling
to the IT department within healthcare
institutions. Once focused solely on ‘keeping
the lights on’, IT has evolved to become a
strategic element within healthcare, much
like it already has in other consumer focused
sectors like retail and hospitality.
It’s now a team focused on helping to
reduce costs, on making more resources
available for medical professionals and on
making medical innovation a reality within
the organisation.
It’s always been the case that by
understanding more about a patient, doctors
can more accurately diagnose an issue.
Now medical professionals can use data
in addition to their patients’ concerns to
help them better understand symptoms.
Everything from medical phone apps to new
imaging technology is providing reams of
data to support diagnosis.
For example, by combining information
on a patient’s lifestyle with data on their
DNA structure, hereditary abnormalities
in the family and heart rate and blood
pressure, steps can be taken to prevent
certain illnesses altogether or help doctors
prescribe medication or lifestyle changes
that are precisely and fully focused on
the physiology of that single patient.
These new innovations, and the data they
generate, are increasingly helping medical
professionals deliver significantly improved
patient outcomes.
However, enabling all of this data to be
accessed in the right time, in the right place
and in the right format is a significant IT
challenge. Estimates suggest that the vast
majority of all data in an organisation
is unstructured. To enable healthcare
providers to benefit from this data, IT is
increasingly looking towards advanced
real-time analytics and ‘deep learning’ using
advanced technologies, such as artificial
intelligence (AI) and machine learning, to
support the processing and delivery of data.
Pure Storage expert:
Improving Patient
Outcomes with AI and
Advanced Analytics
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INTELLIGENTCIO
www.intelligentcio.com