The Journal of mHealth Vol 2 Issue 4 (August) | Page 37
Transforming Patient Data into Actionable Insights
What benefits does analysing
unstructured data (in addition to
structured data) deliver in terms of
healthcare provision?
“As much as 80 to 90 per cent of today’s
health data is in unstructured formats
like patient histories and physician notes,
yet most of it goes unused. It’s unfortunate because there is so much valuable
information that lies in all this untouched
data. Having the ability to analyse this
unstructured data, in combination with
structured data, provides several benefits for clinicians, including more accurate risk stratification, increased practice
efficiency, optimised patient interaction
coding, better, more specific diagnoses,
and stronger patient outcomes.”
What are the difficulties associated
with combining unstructured data,
in terms of issues like privacy?
“We take privacy very seriously. Personal
health information (PHI) is more valuable to hackers than credit card information because it has a longer shelf life and
is more able to be used in identity fraud.
It’s critical that players who deal with
PHI make sure all data is protected, and
we have systems and processes to ensure
this happens. It’s also important that data
traveling from one silo using a particular patient ID is matched accurately with
data from another silo, which might use
a different ID. This is hard to do, and
we’ve got to get it right every time.”
As individual health data expands
exponentially - with the growth of
personal digital health solutions what type of actionable insights can
we begin to expect?
“There has always been an immense gap
between provider and consumer access
to health information. But we’re seeing
this gap slowly closing due to the personalisation of healthcare and increased
consumer use of wearables and mobile
health apps. These devices help patients
and their providers gather valuable
insights that will help them better manage their health and the health of their
local populations. For instance, devices
and applications that track steps can help
patients and their physicians to better
plan and track against weight loss goals.
Combining current and historical data
can also help doctors spot trends and
understand what is happening with the
patient. In addition, having aggregated
data from multiple patients in a population can even lead a healthcare provider
into a new market – such as providing
more services for chronic conditions.”
and unstructured patient data – and
close those gaps in near-real time. Since
the implementation, clinicians at Village
Family Practice have seen a 16 per cent
improvement in coding accuracy.”
What are the new value pathways
within healthcare that these datadriven insights are helping to
achieve?
How far advanced is this process,
across the industry, and what can we
expect for the future?
“Risk adjustment is critical, particularly
now as we’re moving to value-based care.
Data analysis is used by many commercial
payer organisations to more accurately
predict the health costs of each patient
and adjust reimbursement rates accordingly. In addition,