ANALYTICS ACROSS THE HEALTHCARE ECOSYSTEM


Analytics is a key enabler for life sciences and healthcare organizations to create better outcomes for patients, customers and other stakeholders across the entire healthcare ecosystem. While almost two-thirds of organizations across the healthcare ecosystem have analytics strategies in place, our research shows that only a fifth are driving analytics adoption across the enterprise. The key barriers are a lack of data management capabilities and skilled analysts, as well as poor organizational change management. To develop and translate insights into actions that enhance outcomes, organizations will need to collaborate across an expanding ecosystem.



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IBM Global Business  - Services Executive Summary
IBM Institute for Business Value

Analytics across the ecosystem
A prescription for optimizing healthcare outcomes

Heather Fraser , Dan Gordon, John Piccone 
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Overview
Analytics is a key enabler for life sciences and healthcare organizations to create better outcomes for patients, customers and other stakeholders across the entire healthcare ecosystem. While almost two-thirds of organizations across the healthcare ecosystem have analytics strategies in place, our research shows that only a fifth are driving analytics adoption across the enterprise. The key barriers are a lack of data management capabilities and skilled analysts, as well as poor organizational change management. To develop and translate insights into actions that enhance outcomes, organizations will need to collaborate across an expanding ecosystem.
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The healthcare ecosystem is the convergence of otherwise separate entities, such as life sciences organizations, providers and payers, as well as social and government agencies. This convergence, along with enhanced connectivity and mobility, has resulted in a tremendous surge in healthcare-related data that can help create insights and inform actions to:
·        Improve patient outcomes
·        Reduce costs for chronic care
·        Lower insurance premiums
·        Quickly bring new and better drugs, diagnostics, devices and therapies to the market
·        Enhance customer engagement
·        Reduce fraud
·        Improve return on investment.
Some of the potential benefits from using analytics across the healthcare ecosystem are shown in Figure 1. But to optimize the impact these insights and actions can have, information must be shared across the entire ecosystem – a daunting task, perhaps, for organizations that have not yet mastered sharing across the enterprise. Based on based on a global survey by the IBM Institute for Business Value of 555 executives across the healthcare ecosystem, organizations will need to focus on three areas to enable such collaboration:
·        Strategy and governance: Focus on sponsorship and enterprise-wide adoption — A comprehensive plan for governance is a foundational to any analytics strategy. High-level sponsorship of key analytics projects is an important success factor. A governance plan that addresses enterprise-wide adoption is essential at the start of a project. Organizations should target effective, predictive analytics and simulations at senior executives who make complex strategic decisions across an organization’s service lines, as well as key partners outside enterprise, to encourage sponsorship from key stakeholders
·        Data and processes: Manage and integrate data end-to-end — The ability to manage, understand and integrate data generated at all stages of the value chain and in all formats, both structured and unstructured – from discovery to real world use – is a fundamental requirement for organizations to derive benefit from their analytics strategies. Technology and cost proliferation need to be controlled through the overarching analytics strategy. The focus should be on resolving the business problem, not on the supporting technology. A common terminology is required to help business and technical teams understand each other’s analytical needs.
·        People and Organization: Build the right skills profile to fill gaps and speed adoption — Making sure that analytic resources have the appropriate skills profile will speed up adoption of processes across the enterprise. Organizations and institutions must use the right blend of both central and distributed control by maintaining a centralized core skill set. Developing trusted partnerships across the various stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem can provide a competitive advantage. No single organization has all the data or all the capabilities to solve the healthcare ecosystem problems. Organizations need to work with data providers to evolve the necessary data sets and meet data strategy needs.

In today’s information age, data rules. And the organizations that can harness and share that data to create insights, inform actions and drive better outcomes – across all the components of the healthcare ecosystem – will be those most likely positioned to become the outperformers of tomorrow.
Why IBM?
IBM Business Analytics and Optimization services work with clients to gather and apply trusted, relevant information to improve their business outcomes. Specifically for the healthcare ecosystem we can assist you in the areas of:
·        Research Insights
·        Supply Chain Optimization
·        Commercial Analytics • Patient Care & Insights
·         Provider Outcome Analytics
·         Payer Analytics
·        Healthcare Consumer Engagement Analytics
·        Health Plan Risk Plan Analytics
Source: IBM Waston Healthcare 2013