Symphony Technology Group (STG) convened a panel of health care executives and physicians for an event called “Delivering on the Promise of Big Data in Health Care.” The event brought together people with experience leveraging data in different sectors of the health care industry, with the ultimate goal of finding unifying solutions to streamline operations. The meeting, which was held in Washington, D.C., was the first in what should be a global series of panels.

The participants concluded that a network of data points can provide essential information to a number of end users along different stages of the health care process, allowing for better decision-making from product development to point of care integration. They also noted the ways that health care analytics differ from the more widespread business intelligence analytics, because of the heightened quality standards and security concerns that managing patients’ health information entails.

With health analytics, there is naturally a smaller margin for error than in the business world. Patients are also more involved in their own health care than the average business or retail customer, while the degree to which they are informed about health care can vary greatly from one patient to the next.

“We believe that there is a greater potential to harness the full potential of data and analytics in our industry if that data is both ‘big’ (high volume, high velocity) and ‘deep’ (contextually and clinically rich),” said STG health care operations partner Simon Kennedy. “However, biology is not algebra so to solve the varying, and very different, applications you need also to be ‘smart’ — tailoring the data and analytics used very specifically to the problem at hand.”