Getting Value from Big Data

Health IT is going through an era of both expansion and convergence, in which the universe of available information is growing exponentially, while at the same time, we’re trying to smash all the resulting data together into dense little packages. It’s kind of like the big-bang theory meets big data.

Regardless of how we choose to take advantage of today’s cosmos of health information, our strategies must ultimately lead to greater affordability, quality and satisfaction. Gather all the data you want and churn it through your big data machine all day long, but if you don’t turn it into value, it’s a wasted effort.

Pharma companies increasingly want access to information on population needs to create best-value products. Payers need access to treatment outcomes to determine best-value benefit design. And providers need access to historic patient data to create the best care plans.

“Information exchanges have made progress, but you must find a sustainable business model of incentives where you have an industry that needs to show relative effectiveness. And to be able to do that, you need new collaborative models,” says Brett Davis, a Consulting Principal at Deloitte.

The synthesis of data will translate information into value-based business models. Insight, rather than raw data, is what will make the most impact.

Value-based designs aren’t just nice add-ons, they represent new business propositions. Every stakeholder should be involved in some model of shared savings already or should be seriously considering one in the near future.

According to Davis, the key questions to answer in the next year are: what’s working, for whom, why and at what cost? Each stakeholder has a piece of the data needed to discover the answers.

See more of this story at Managed Healthcare Executive.