Healthcare professionals already harness data to make quick and informed decisions, allowing them to be more confident in their patient safety, operational success and patient care. The continuous flow of information is the lifeblood that helps keep the healthcare sector going, from departments to technologies to staff and patients. 

But it is by optimising the process of capturing, storing and analysing this information, that healthcare organisations can continue working towards their short and long-term operational goals and data strategies. 

At the most basic level, data should help healthcare professionals with their diagnoses and overall outcomes, through efficient and informed decision-making. But is this truly the case? 

Steve Wilcockson, Data Science expert at KX

Time to give healthcare data the treatment it needs

The volume of data that runs through healthcare organizations is growing exponentially and demands are growing larger. This means every minute and every day there is more data to store and analyse and it needs to happen more quickly than it did before. 

On its own, data is just a vast collection of information points. But once you run this data through models that can churn out insights, true value can start to be realised. These insights can then be used as the basis for reliable decision-making across the hospital, in the wards, field, labs and even the boardroom. This can be taken even further when time-series data, historical context and urgency to drive efficiency is added at the times when it really matters most – diagnosing and saving lives.

However, the ability to perform without these valuable insights gets harder and harder in light of the global pandemic and now the energy and cost of living crises. To get to a pinnacle of efficiency, healthcare leaders must look to modernise the data centers which store ever-growing amounts of data or face data becoming a barrier to their own progression and success.

Time to heal healthcare data overload

The key to success lies in using, deploying, and communicating the outputs of analytical models that can sort through the data overload and leverage the best insights in the quickest time. When the data is contextualized, through dashboards and reports, it can help solve a healthcare organisation’s main challenges. Decisions around cost reduction, improving patient care, preparing, and scaling up to meet fluctuating demands, and empowering time-poor staff members, can be complemented with trustworthy insights. 

These continuously growing data sets have limited value without additional time-series and historical data and analysis. When utilized properly, decision-making – that underpins the valuable work healthcare practitioners do - can be based on trustworthy insights. And with the right amount of data centers, healthcare organisations can store with compressed efficiency, and analyse their data with immediacy. Thereby avoiding overload, which benefits no one. Healthcare professionals and leaders can no longer wait to invest in real-time data analytics, it needs to happen now.