People often assume that the biggest database is the best. Size is important, yes, but equally important are “data types,” “data velocity,” and “data integration and accessibility.” Although William Cowper certainly wasn’t thinking of databases in 1785 when he wrote “variety’s the very spice of life that gives it all its flavour [sic],” he was […]
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Value. It’s a subjective term in and of itself. Valuable to whom? In relation to what? While definitions vary, one thing the health care industry can agree on is that reducing wasteful spending is essential to improving the U.S. health care system — especially spending on treatments that put patients at unnecessary risk. That’s a […]
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How people have behaved in the past can tell us a lot about how they will act in the future. This statement holds true in medicine. As scores of data — from medical, behavioral, socioeconomic and even psychographic sources — can attest, medical histories can say a lot about how someone will react to a […]
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Change is the theme of the moment in health care. There’s a general recognition that moving toward a health system that prioritizes prevention and quality of care is the right way to go, but almost no agreement on how exactly to get there. Nobody said leaving the world of fee-for-service would be easy, but I […]
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More people could be living healthier lives if their employers used data to guide their wellness strategies. That’s one take-away from the new 9th Annual Wellness in the Workplace study. According to the survey, employers who say they are very effective at using data are more likely to: Describe their population health management (PHM) programs […]
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I recently called natural language processing (NLP) artificial intelligence (AI) with an ROI — and yes, it’s a catchy phrase, but it’s also true. NLP is an essential asset in today’s health care landscape. Let me tell you a story. Bill and Ted work at the same company – Excellent Adventures, Ltd. – but they […]
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John Selig, senior vice president at the Lewin Group and former director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services, was interviewed recently at the Health IT Summit hosted in Baltimore (April 5–6). He discussed the impact of social determinants of health (SDOH) on overall health outcomes. SDOH is still a relatively new area of focus […]
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With health care providers treating hundreds of thousands of people each year, the amount of data generated by those interactions is complex and overwhelming. Yet it is this very data that answers the questions central to health care management and achieving the Triple Aim. The challenge for health care providers is to develop strategies that […]
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Stale jokes about doctors’ bad handwriting aside, mounds of health care data are actually stored in difficult-to-read physicians’ notes and text fields. That makes natural language processing (NLP) particularly relevant to health care. What is NLP? It’s a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) technology focused on allowing computers to understand and interpret human language. Why […]
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As health care becomes more complex, the consumer experience is getting more fragmented, which makes it all too easy for people to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. This is not good. For one thing the industry is trying to improve health, not make it worse by leaving a trail of exasperated consumers. What’s more, health care […]
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