Management Information Analysis

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Big Data Use Growing in Project Planning

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Project PlanningThe use of big data analytics is up across all industries, as companies are tapping into the ever-growing well of available information to plan their business strategies. And many organizations are going even further, using big data as an essential tool for project planning. Big data affords enterprises unprecedented insights into market trends and other elements that can determine a project’s success, such as geographical surroundings and population demographics.

With this data in hand, companies can make more informed decisions regarding expansion or relocation plans. This can be especially useful in industries like health care and retail, which are already at the forefront of analytics adoption for other purposes, but is certainly applicable for any project of this kind.

Both health organizations and retailers are frequently looking for expansion opportunities, and it is essential for them to make sure that they have the best chance to tap into a new market. With detailed information on the population of a particular city or neighborhood, they can maximize the return on a major investment.

“Using data in the industry is not new,” said University of Illinois School of Architecture professor Randy Deutsch. “The built environment has long been an abundant source of data. What is new is the amount of data that is available to us, our capacity to measure and ability to capture, process, and act on that data and, frankly, our industry’s urgent need to do so.”

Business intelligence analytics is no longer a niche trend, but it does have plenty of room for growth. Even as big data itself increases exponentially, so too do its uses in the business world.

Health Care Trending Toward Predictive Analytics

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Data AnalyticsAs the data analytics industry has grown, health care is one of the sectors that has benefited the most. Many health organizations have systems in place to gather and analyze large quantities of information, and that trend is only going to continue to grow in the near future. As this blog has reported, several studies have predicted exponential increases for the health care analytics market over the course of the next few years.

Now experts are focusing on how those analytics tools can evolve to become more effective. Seed fund Rock Health has published a report titled “Predictive Analytics: The Future of Personalized Healthcare,” saying that the necessary next step is a shift from the current descriptive analytics to a predictive model.

According to the report, capitalists have already invested $1.9 billion in predictive analytics projects — a large sum, but a fraction of the total market. That number will go up, bringing benefits to both patients and health care providers. Accurate predictive analytics can greatly reduce costs for organizations and assist in project planning.

Planning analytics are possible thanks to the growth of the Internet of Things, which is generating data about health care consumers at an unprecedented rate. Through the implementation of an ETL architecture, all that information can be gathered together in one place for analysis.

Citing JAMA figures, Rock health points out that organizations could recoup $355 billion per year with effective data analysis. With comprehensive, accurate analytics tools in place, health care providers can improve their decision-making processes and strategic choices.

MGMA Reveals Dissatisfaction with CMS Reporting

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Medical Data AnalyticsAt the MGMA14 event in Las Vegas, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) revealed the results of a survey it conducted among more than 1,000 physicians on the effectiveness of the reporting programs run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). A majority of those surveyed said that the programs have not improved quality of service, instead making reporting needlessly complex.

On the plus side, 83 percent of respondents said their organizations have internal programs in place to improve clinical quality, and 77 percent use evidence-based analytical tools for that purpose. But 84 percent said that the three federal programs — EHR Meaningful Use, Physician Quality Reporting System and the Value-Based Payment Modifier Program — do not contribute to improving quality, and 85 percent claimed they had negatively affected productivity due to their complexity.

Physicians believe that the inefficiency of the reporting programs affects not just quality of care but the overall operations of health care centers, using up the staff’s valuable time. Most agreed that the CMS should consolidate the three programs to streamline the reporting process and eliminate redundancies.

“Medicare has lost focus with its physician quality reporting programs,” said MGMA vice president of government affairs Anders Gilberg. “Instead of providing timely, meaningful and actionable information to help physicians treat patients, this has become a massive bureaucratic reporting exercise. Each program has its own set of arcane and duplicative rules which force physician practices to divert resources away from patient care.”

Until the CMS enacts changes, health care providers can institute data management solutions that will help them reduce the amount of staff time spent on the reporting process.

Study Forecasts Accelerated Five-Year Growth for Health Care Analytics

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Health Care AnalyticsA recently published report from market research firm TechNavio predicts that the global health care analytics market will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of roughly 25 percent in the period between 2013 and 2018. The company identifies the increasing adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by health care providers as one of the major drivers of this growth.

The use of EHRs is fast becoming widespread, initially as a tool to make patients’ health information readily available and easy to update, but the potential future benefits go much further. EHRs could allow physicians to share information with their peers anywhere in the world, and this collaboration could lead to improved diagnoses in particularly difficult or unusual cases.

As this blog reported, a separate study by IQ4I Research and Consultancy recently forecasted that the market will reach $20.8 billion in value by 2020. TechNavio also identified some specific areas where they expect to see particular development, including on the business side, where reducing medical errors will bring down costs.

“Health care analytics analyzes this data to provide insightful information regarding planning, management, measurement and learning in health care enterprises,” the report reads. “This information can then be used to enhance the decision-making capability of top management.”

Both IQ4I and TechNavio agreed that the major factors that could prevent even faster market growth are privacy and security concerns. While the benefits of experts sharing information among themselves are evident, there will also naturally be questions about patient confidentiality and whether sensitive data is secure. But it is undeniable that data solutions can have a very positive effect on the health care industry, and security measures are already evolving in step with the market itself.

Partners CIO Discusses How Analytics Can Change Health Care

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Health Care AnalyticsThe Big Data & Health Care Analytics Forum, organized by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and Healthcare IT News, will take place from November 20-21 in Boston. Ahead of the conference, the chief information officer of Boston-based Partners HealthCare, James Noga, spoke about the possibilities of analytics to transform health care in the not-too-distant future.

The main evolution Noga wants to see from health care analytics is a shift from predictive to prescriptive analytics. Predictive analytics allow health centers to allocate personnel and resources by forecasting trends, such as admission rates, based on past experience. But in the future that analysis will have a real-time impact on how hospitals operate and even aid in making better diagnoses.

Noga predicts that the data scientist, a figure that already exists in other industries, will become commonplace in health care, and that the CIO’s role will be to manage and prioritize IT initiatives.

“But the CIO isn’t necessarily the business or clinical owner of the analytic component of big data,” he noted. “I think the CIO has to be the enabler of the underlying infrastructure and obviously participate in the overall strategy, but it’s really our research community and our clinical community and our business planning folks that own it in terms of what questions do we want to answer, what type of analytics do we want to employ.”

The demand for data warehouse architecture, which only a few health care organizations have begun implementing, will rise as the possibilities of analytics become more apparent, and that growing adoption will lead to greater development of health care analytics.

Survey: More Businesses Using Data Analytics for Security

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Data Analytics For SecurityUse of data analytics solutions is a growing trend across many areas, such as health care, marketing and retail. One of the latest areas to benefit, according to a recent survey, is business security. Nemertes Research published the results of a survey of more than 200 IT experts and found that many organizations have either implemented security analytics projects or are exploring the possibility of doing so.

Nearly one in four respondents said their companies are already using big data to enhance their security, 13.6 percent said they will begin doing so before the year is out and almost one fifth are in the planning stages, with many expected to begin implementation next year.

As TechTarget notes, this trend can be largely attributed to the recent rise in large-scale and highly publicized cyber attacks, some of which have cost high-ranking executives their jobs. Hackers’ methods are becoming more complex, so companies need to beef up their security measures as well. On the plus side, analytics tools are better equipped than ever to respond to these threats.

“Attacks are coming from all different directions, and you can’t really sit there and reverse engineer it and say, ‘This indicates an attack,'” said Nemertes CEO Johna Till Johnson. “But big data can do that for you.”

According to the survey, the main issue companies face when implementing these solutions is a lack of staff that has the sufficient knowledge of both data and security to carry out the task. A database management system can simplify analysis, using ETL tools to bring all the necessary security data together in one format, where it is easy to read and draw conclusions from.

Survey: High Satisfaction Among Mobile EHR Users

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Electronic Health RecordsResearch Now has published the results of a survey of 600 physicians on their use of electronic health records (EHRs), showing an overall growth in the use of EHRs and other technological resources on the part of health care providers. Only 26 percent of respondents said they access EHRs from mobile devices, but their degree of satisfaction is much higher than that of desktop and laptop users. Fifty-eight percent of mobile users said they are “very satisfied” with their EHRs, compared to just 28 percent for non-mobile solutions.

Among the main reasons for that satisfaction is ease of use: only 39 percent of physicians who access EHRs on mobile devices found the technology challenging to learn, versus 58 percent of non-mobile users. When asked about their EHRs’ effect on productivity, the results were similarly very favorable toward mobile solutions.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they or their organizations plan to increase their investment in EHRs, with most of that going to patient portals. These portals provide patients with 24-hour access to their own personal health information, and are an essential part of what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act defines as “Meaningful Use Stage 2.” This is in keeping with the findings of a ResearchFox study that identified federal guidelines as one of the main drivers of health care analytics.

Among EHR challenges, the most common response was a difficulty integrating data from external systems, followed by importing existing records. ETL development makes it easier to draw patients’ information from diverse sources and bring it all together in EHRs, where it can be conveniently accessed.

Holidays Bring New Opportunities, Challenges for Retail Analytics

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Retail Data AnalyticsAccording to two recently published surveys, the recovery of the American economy will have a positive effect on the retail industry during the upcoming Holiday season. An Accenture study revealed that 21 percent of consumers plan to spend more money this year than they did in 2013. While this is undeniably good news for retailers, they also need to ask themselves whether they can boost their profits even more through the use of analytical tools.

The Accenture survey forecasts an increase in in-store as well as online purchases, and retailers have to work to ensure that they have all the necessary information to improve their service on both fronts. Although E-commerce is obviously a much more recent phenomenon, a MultiChannel Merchant article notes that, because of its nature, it is easier to obtain analyzable data from it than it is from in-store activity.

But gathering valuable information from a store isn’t an insurmountable obstacle. Store managers can gain valuable point-of-sale insights at brick-and-mortar locations, from what products consumers prefer to average wait times, which can help them adjust their service accordingly. These analytics can also improve inter-store inventory for retailers with more than one location and help determine pricing strategy to maximize return on investment, among other applications.

Retail information systems can gather data from multiple sources, which is essential when consumers are making purchases both in person and online, and from a variety of platforms. A Prosper Insights & Analytics survey shows that the number of online purchases that are made from mobile devices is on the rise. An ETL architecture helps retailers draw valuable conclusions regardless of the complexity of their operations.

Authorities Hope Data Analytics Can Help Contain Virus Outbreaks

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Analytics Virus OutbreaksThe Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa has been grabbing international headlines for weeks, and now, as authorities fight to contain the disease’s spread, some experts are recommending the use of a new tool: data analytics. In the countries where the epidemic began, the World Health Organization (WHO) has acknowledged the difficulty in obtaining reliable numbers, and organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have begun using mobile data to gain insights into the spread of the virus.

Mobile phones are ubiquitous in many African countries where landline infrastructure is sorely lacking. French telecommunications company Orange S.A. recently handed over anonymized data from 150,000 users in Senegal, helping to create a map of population movement and communications. The hope is that this information will allow authorities to better plan the location of treatment centers and, if necessary, restrict travel between certain regions.

Mobile devices can give exact data on people’s locations and identify calls to hospitals or specialized hotlines to detect specific cities or regions where outbreaks occur. Similar tactics have been used since 2010 during the Haiti cholera outbreak.

“Big data analytics is about bringing together many different data sources and mining them to find patterns,” said Accenture Health managing director Frances Dare to the BBC. “We have health clinic and physician reports, media reports, comment on social media, information from public health workers on the ground, transactional data from retailers and pharmacies, travel ticket purchases, helpline data, as well as geo-spatial tracking.”

A comprehensive ETL architecture can gather data from all of these disparate sources and organize it into a unified format that authorities and health organizations can use to track a disease’s spread and optimize containment and preventative measures.

Comprehensive Information Key for Data Analytics Success

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Data Analytics Big data is one of the most talked-about trends in business these days, but many companies don’t fully understand what it is or why it is important, or else they lack the insight to take full advantage of the information they gather. An article in CMS Wire points out a few of the factors that businesses should take into account before launching into a data analytics strategy.

Data comes in many forms and from many sources, and it’s essential that companies have the tools to read all forms and extract the parts that will be useful to their business. Millions of gigabytes of data are automatically generated by devices connected through the Internet of Things, but a smaller yet often more important amount of information comes from emails or social media interactions, or is entered manually by employees.

The degree to which each source of data is useful varies greatly from one organization to the next, and can change over time as business strategies evolve. Even though it is still the early days of analytics, companies that have managed to implement successful systems are already reaping the rewards. A recent Accenture study found that high-performing companies are five times more likely to use information analytics, and that companies with advanced analytics outperform the average S&P 500 business by 64 percent.

A data management services provider can help companies get started on the daunting task of gathering and organizing information from various sources through the extract, transform, load process. This involves culling data and uploading it to the receiving system in a unified format, making it much easier to analyze and draw conclusions from.

Management Information Analysis
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