The healthcare analytics market is set to be worth US$50.5 billion by 2024, up from US$14 billion in 2019. So investment in business intelligence software is going to prove evermore crucial for healthcare organisations. But it’s important to note that most healthcare institutions are already using business intelligence tools within their operations. For example, data governance systems to ensure data security compliance and data analytics functionality. So the role of business intelligence software is to integrate these elements and provide a seamless, central point of access.

Use cases of business intelligence in healthcare

There are myriad use cases for implementing business intelligence solutions within your healthcare setting, but a few core areas are:

• Symptom-based treatment planning - intended to save time and get more patient throughput, thus freeing up clinicians from the task of manual planning.
• Patient volume-driven staff management - real-time analysis of hospital infection rates, readmissions and staff shortages can help healthcare practises plan ahead and more effectively manage resourcing.
• Alerting healthcare providers to what services patients need and thereby cutting repeat visits - clinical decision support (CDS) systems can help healthcare providers improve patient safety through various alerts covering things such as drug interactions and guidance on pharmaceutical dosing.
• Tracking and identifying those who require follow-up appointments - to enable better communication between clinicians and patients while reducing instances of missed or delayed diagnoses.
• Facility supply chain management - integrating data at key points in the supply chain can help healthcare organisations with procurement, sourcing and contracting, supply data management and value analysis.

Four biggest benefits of business intelligence in healthcare

The primary goal of integrating business intelligence software within a healthcare environment is to deliver better care, a more positive patient experience and a reduction in preventable fatalities. But business intelligence tools in healthcare settings yield many other benefits.

1. Better patient outcomes

Above all else, integrated with electronic health records (EHR) software, business intelligence solutions can help clinicians gain timely access to patient data, giving them a holistic view of patient history and prognoses and integrating this with a patient’s current treatment plan—allowing them to deliver appropriate care as quickly as possible. It can also help healthcare professionals empower their patients to take a more active role in managing their own health and wellbeing by providing online healthcare management services, including appointment booking, test results and quick-access billing information.

2. Personalised treatment plans

Because business intelligence software brings all patient data together in one place, it gives practitioners a 360-degree view of a patient that hasn’t been possible until now. With this holistic picture, and using predictive analytics, clinicians can take proactive rather than reactive measures to keep their patients in good health. They can choose to interact with patients at various stages in their healthcare journey; for example, using worsening health data to prompt clinical assessment or treatments before it’s too late. This ‘big picture’ patient view also enables clinicians to move away from a one-size-fits-all model towards a tailored treatment plan determined by real-world data.

3. More streamlined services

BI integration, offers a self-service approach, while also making data far simpler to interpret, thereby empowering each practitioner to research and act upon the findings in their patients’ data. By providing clinicians with timely access and the freedom to analyse research data, business intelligence software can help healthcare organisations to enable insight-driven decision making with significant cost and time savings. This approach is especially relevant in cases when there is no possibility of bringing on board dedicated data science experts and IT professionals.

4. Lower operational costs

By enabling healthcare organisations to intelligently manage staffing and supply chains according to demand, BI software can help reduce operational costs and allocate resources where they’re needed most. Business intelligence integration also leads to faster and more accurate diagnoses and proactive clinician-to-patient interaction, while enabling patients to more closely manage their own healthcare, all of which can cut the number of unnecessary hospital admissions and free-up resources.

Summary

Data has become integral to helping healthcare providers make decisions around patient care while managing their operations in the most effective way possible. And with the ever-increasing burden on care services globally, particularly amid and beyond the pandemic, accessing and using data to enable faster and smarter decision-making is more critical than ever.

So, by bringing disparate patient datasets together in one place and making it easier for professionals to interpret the information gathered, business intelligence software has the power to not only help healthcare organisations survive but to help them—along with their patients—thrive.