Healthcare Business Intelligence

Healthcare is becoming more and more data-driven, and business intelligence (BI) is a key tool for helping companies make smart choices and run their businesses more efficiently. In the next few years, the healthcare sector is likely to make increasing use of BI and data analytics. Business intelligence (BI) solutions enable firms to generate visuals and reports from data sourced from electronic health records, inquiries from patients, and surveys.

In this post, we will specifically talk about the role of business intelligence in the healthcare industry. Let’s move forward and understand healthcare business intelligence!

1. What is Business Intelligence?

The term “business intelligence” (BI) describes the methods, systems, and procedures that help companies gather, collect, manage, and examine data for decision-making purposes.

Business intelligence (BI) is the process of gaining insight into a company’s activities, market dynamics, consumer behavior, and other aspects that could affect the company’s success by analyzing data from a variety of sources, including social media, financial information, and market studies. Afterward, the data is processed and utilized to create various visual representations, such as reports and dashboards, which aid decision-makers in comprehending the present status of the company and making educated judgments regarding its future.

A wide variety of business intelligence (BI) tools and technologies are at your service, such as data centers, reports, analytical instruments, and applications for data visualization. Enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and financial systems are examples of internal data sources that organizations can tap into with these tools. External data sources, like online social networking platforms and market research firms, are also accessible. It is implied by companies for many reasons such as finding new company prospects, better-serving customers, refining marketing efforts, and cutting expenses plans.

2. What Is Business Intelligence in Healthcare?

When it comes to healthcare, business intelligence (BI) means storing, processing, and analyzing data from a variety of sources, such as electronic health records (EHRs), medical devices, and data created by patients themselves. Providing healthcare businesses with useful insights and data is the main objective of business intelligence (BI). Additionally, it aids in operational optimization, which in turn improves patient outcomes and decreases expenses.

Businesses in the sales and marketing industries especially benefit from business intelligence since it helps them better understand their customer demographics, purchasing habits, and other important information, which ultimately leads to streamlined processes.

The transportation and logistics sector experiences something analogous. Implementing BI made it much easier to comprehend logistics data, which had previously been a real challenge. Now, data like navigating behavior, timetables and routing, financial statements, and fuel analysis reports are readily available. BI has also become increasingly important in the healthcare industry.

3. Importance of Business Intelligence in the Healthcare Industry

With the use of business intelligence, healthcare facilities like hospitals, clinics, and laboratories can sort their data into the most important categories. Well, there’s still more to its contribution. Let’s discuss further.

3.1 Enhance Patient Results

Improved patient outcomes can be achieved through the healthcare IT sector’s use of business intelligence systems, which highlight developments and trends in the market. To find patients who are at risk of problems, BI can analyze data from EHRs and other sources. This allows for preventative treatments to be implemented.

3.2 Cost Efficiency

Businesses may save money with the aid of business consulting by pinpointing their deficiencies. Companies can find ways to save money and improve efficiency by using business intelligence in healthcare.

3.3 Prompt Decision-Making

To help healthcare professionals make educated judgments, BI consulting services can be searched for to guarantee real-time data assessment. By reviewing data in real-time, healthcare institutions can react to circumstances that are changing quickly or in the event of an emergency.

3.4 Care Management for Patients

Healthcare firms can benefit from business intelligence software in managing patients’ health and analyzing data and records from many sources. According to experts from AI development companies, healthcare institutions can apply BI software to institute preventative measures that lower the occurrence of certain disorders.

3.5 Drive Business Growth

New healthcare company prospects can be discovered with the use of business intelligence tools by analyzing consumer behavior and industry trends. The upshot will be enhanced company growth and prosperity.

4. Benefits of Business Intelligence in Healthcare

Medical centers can improve their ability to foresee patients’ needs and provide quicker treatment by using these sophisticated business intelligence technologies. Improving patient care with even a small amount of efficiency has the potential to save lives. Some of the most important ways that business intelligence changes healthcare are these.

4.1 Maximizes Company Expansion

With the use of business intelligence, healthcare firms may study customer habits and market tendencies to find development prospects.

4.2 Contributes to Better R&D

With the use of business intelligence, medical data, and products can be examined to find areas for improvement in terms of development and research as well as to direct decision-making.

4.3 Boosts Patient Care

For patient satisfaction, it is vital to create a favorable healthcare environment. This is when hospitals’ use of business intelligence becomes apparent. It sheds light on the habits and preferences of patients. More patient-centered healthcare services can be achieved by examining this data. Better patient involvement is achieved by customizing services to individual requirements. Additionally, it improves the effectiveness of healthcare delivery.

4.4 Streamlines Medical Processes

Improving healthcare efficiency is critical for the advancement of patient care. Healthcare facilities can achieve optimal performance by implementing medical business intelligence strategies. This type of intelligence can transform intricate datasets into practical tactics for operations. The process of admitting patients and their subsequent discharges can both be optimized with its support.

4.5 Predicts the Needs of Patients

Both the micro and macro levels of patient demands can be anticipated with the use of BI.

4.6 Customized Treatment

Business intelligence (BI) shifts through mountains of data in search of previously unseen connections. It enables the physician to personalize the course of therapy based on the patient’s requirements.

4.7 Promotes Public Health

Public health professionals can benefit from business intelligence’s trend data analysis by better comprehending and resolving public health challenges.

4.8 Monetary Strategy

To optimize financial planning and keep tabs on important performance metrics, business intelligence integrates clinical, economic, and operational data. Medical professionals can use it to determine whether certain expenses are feasible and to streamline the processes of billing, calculating, and allocating cash.

5. Challenges of Adopting BI in Healthcare

Improving the effectiveness and value of patient care relies heavily on the utilization of healthcare business intelligence solutions. Now, let’s examine the challenges associated with the same.

5.1 Difficulties Of Data Access

Big healthcare companies like ACOs can run 15 or more EHR systems concurrently. While some of these systems may be housed by one of the EHR suppliers, others might be created in-house. Pulling data from all of the EHRs truly requires understanding the unique features of each as every EHR has its own backend database. Furthermore, it might include creating extra code to enable data storages interact with one another in addition to a single ETL method pulling data.

In this instance, caregivers would most likely have to leave the full process of merging information sources to a healthcare-oriented business intelligence firm or resort to either an EHR conversion company to bring different information together and then hand it to the BI team. Either way, smart companies who understand most EHR systems available as well as their special qualities will handle this endeavor.

Making clinical and patient data available to the analytical and reporting environment helps one to make changes with low risks. Organizations must so consider their line of action, contact their legal experts, and identify suitable levers in case these issues arise.

5.2 Regulatory Compliance and Legal Considerations 

Healthcare companies have to follow rules such General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and HIPAA in the United States. Following these rules complicates healthcare business intelligence projects from data acquisition to storage to analysis.

5.3 Inadequate Data Architecture

Designing data architecture is one of the main difficulties in providing business intelligence solutions. Basically, it affects the reliability, scalability, and efficacy of BI solutions as well as the basis upon which the whole BI ecosystem sits. It is possible to organize, combine, and retain information consistently with a well-structured data architecture. Besides that, it makes accessing data easier, gets rid of data silos, and gives all people a single source of truth.

However, there are many information sources, such as structured, partially structured, and unorganized data, making it hard to combine and manage different types of data. Your team has to create a flexible and agile data architecture if you want everyone in the firm to engage with the same dependable and current information.

5.4 Data Quality

The majority of healthcare data is unstructured and can be found in the following formats: text, images, numeric, paper, audio, and visuals. Most of the time, the most important and new details about patients, employees, and performance are included in this unstructured and untapped data. Currently, EMR systems are mostly used for keeping legal records and focusing on financial data. Making these EHR systems more resourceful and interoperable so clinicians can access transactional data linked to patient care and utilize it to derive valuable insights is a challenge.

5.5 Weak Content Management

Businesses that ignore the need for efficient content management may have several difficulties throughout the process of using business intelligence. Content management in this case refers to the management and organization of the data itself, as well as reports, graphs, and other data that BI tools.

Employees who can quickly access and use the required materials are clearly more inclined to accept BI solutions. Effective content management helps to quickly find and retrieve particular reports or data.

Since it offers detailed descriptions of the metrics used to assess data, each of these reports also needs documentation created for it. Documentation guarantees users a grasp of and suitable interpretation of facts to enable better decisions. It is also favorable to inform your employees about new reports or updates to existing ones. You may thus assist your staff to remain current with the newest ideas.

In addition to good content management, it is important to provide material in an understandable simple way. This helps one to think about creating user-friendly interfaces for BI products. Using graphs, charts, and other visuals, such UIs can easily show complex data.

6. Use Cases of BI in Healthcare

The most important ways in which BI may change healthcare are the ones below. These cases demonstrate how data may improve healthcare results.

6.1 Clinician-Driven Data Analysis for Enhanced Care

Healthcare professionals who have business knowledge at hand make better decisions. They apply tailored therapy approaches. This results in a methodical strategy for patient diagnosis and treatment by prediction and prevention of possible medical problems.

Tracking treatment results also helps using business intelligence and healthcare analytics. Real-time data enables quick and efficient change of treatment strategies. Using this information, clinicians have gotten better at controlling chronic diseases. It is only now in terms of responses but proactive enhancement of patient health.

In healthcare, business intelligence manifests itself in the form of patient admission prediction and patient identification of high risk. This proactive study helps readmission rates to be much lower.

6.2 Financial Performance Analysis

Healthcare business intelligence combines and examines information from insurance claims, electronic health records, and billing to identify trends in income and expenses.

Organizations thus learn about revenue cycle management, service cost-effectiveness, and patient demographics. With this knowledge in hand, healthcare providers can then decide on service pricing and financial management tactics that will increase profitability.

6.3 Market Research and Competitive Analysis

Healthcare companies and independent clinics use business intelligence systems in market research and competitive analysis to investigate patient demographics, regional health trends, and rival service offers.

The knowledge gained from this research helps medical professionals spot development prospects, customize treatments to fit consumer needs, and differentiate themselves from rivals.

6.4 Patient Care and Satisfaction

Digital technology is gradually becoming more and more important for medicinal services to support the running of a healthcare system. The situation that supports the daily operations of surgeons, doctors, and all other healthcare professionals is what emergency clinics and other medical service associations require. By use of Electronic Health Record, BI aggregates and provides all the instances to a doctor. Every patient’s data is tracked by this software.

Through a basic program downloaded on a mobile, tablet, or laptop, the doctor can view every single test and treatment report of the patient both at the office and at home. Eliminating repeat tests meets the patient satisfaction level who does not need to rework a comparable test. Because of any missing data, and aids in saving a lot of money. The doctor also enjoys being able to better assist the patient.

6.5 Telemedicine and Remote Care Analysis

Healthcare BI takes the front stage in evaluating telemedicine technologies and remote treatment as their value grows. It examines rates of technology adoption, therapy effectiveness, and patient engagement levels.

Particularly for patients in rural or underprivileged locations, the knowledge acquired helps healthcare practitioners improve their telemedicine offers, handle technological issues, and increase access to treatment.

6.6 Improved Levels of Preventive Healthcare

Accessibility to the whole clinical, genetic, and social history of patients allows BI systems to calculate illness risk. For certain people, predictive analytics assist in preventing possible health issues, therefore preventing some diseases especially hereditary and lifestyle disorders. Under such circumstances, healthcare professionals can make quick judgments and actions that produce good therapy.

In situations of relapses, predictive analytics in healthcare may also assist in understanding the likelihood of relapse and designing dynamic treatment programs that can quickly address patients’ health problems.

The healthcare sector has access to a great volume of medical data, including lab and patient records. This is still expanding second by second. Macro-level usage of business analytics tools derived from this data will enable proactive monitoring of any problems or outbreaks requiring policy actions.

7. BI Tools That Can Be Used in Healthcare

There is a growing need for advanced healthcare BI tools because of the terabytes sizes of complicated data generated by the digital transformation of the healthcare business. The healthcare industry makes use of the following common business intelligence (BI) tools:

7.1 Tableau

Tableau is a popular business intelligence (BI) application that helps companies make visually appealing dashboards using their data. It is also a leader in data visualization. With the use of visual analytics, it aids healthcare companies in becoming data-driven. Which in turn improves patient experiences and results. Discover data with ease with drag-and-drop filters and natural language searches. The platform is designed for users with varying degrees of technical expertise. Both self-hosted and SaaS deployment strategies are available with Tableau.

7.2 Microsoft Power BI

Power BI is a formidable competitor in the healthcare market and has the same degree of popularity as Tableau. Large data volumes are no match for this enterprise-level BI platform’s sophisticated analytical capabilities and flexible features. Nevertheless, it can be difficult to understand and utilize at first, and more training may be necessary. But nobody can deny that Power BI is a formidable business intelligence tool with the potential to revolutionize healthcare.

7.3 Qlik Sense

To enable proactive data-driven decision-making, Qlik Sense utilizes artificial intelligence and a unique associative engine. It is a full self-service data analytics platform. It facilitates the consolidation of healthcare providers’ data as well as the unlimited exploration of that data to answer crucial questions. Qlik Sense also speeds up the process of making better and it has more informed judgments. Featuring a multi-cloud architecture that permits versatile deployment choices. It is a modern cloud-based business intelligence platform and the next-generation upgrade of QlikView.

7.4 Domo

Domo is a cloud-based program for managing businesses that integrates with a wide range of data sources, such as databases, spreadsheets, and data that is accessible online. It works with a wide range of devices, including Windows and Mac computers, iPad tablets, and mobile phones, making it affordable for firms of all sizes.

From currency conversions and best-selling product offers to measure income by location and advertising return on investment (ROI) by channel, Domo provides insight and analysis at both the micro and macro levels. In addition to providing access to comprehensive data via an integrated dashboard, Domo also provides straightforward perception tools.

7.5 Amazon QuickSight

Customers are only charged for the time they use this Amazon QuickSight cloud-based BI solution, thanks to its pay-per-session pricing mechanism. Aside from the aforementioned business intelligence solutions, Amazon QuickSight is compatible with a wide variety of file formats. 

7.6 Sisense

Sisense is a BI tool that offers data visualizations, analysis, and reports. By analyzing one-of-a-kind datasets, this software helps companies anticipate and plan for important business patterns. With Sisense, businesses can consolidate data from many sources into one comprehensive database. After that, the program automatically reformats the data into a standard format. Then, with the use of various filters, clients can only utilize the data according to their requirements.

7.7 Diver Platform

The Diver Platform, provided by Dimensional Insight, is an end-to-end package of information analytics tools that encourages users to explore data discovery and ad hoc analytics. It analyzes data that has been consolidated from several sources into a single database. Once users get their data, they may build dashboards to show how valuable it is.

8. Conclusion

In this digital age, business intelligence is becoming more significant in the healthcare sector. You can enhance your practice, boost productivity in operations, and provide better treatment for patients based on precise, data-driven insights with the correct business intelligence technology.

FAQ

What is healthcare business analytics?

Healthcare data analytics assists managers in forecasting the accessibility of resources, medical facilities, examinations, etc. As a result, both managerial choices and the confidence of patients in healthcare treatments have been encouraged.

What is business intelligence in healthcare?

From treating and diagnosing patients to clinical trials and medication research, business intelligence tools and technologies can improve administrative and clinical procedures in nearly every aspect of healthcare. 

What is healthcare intelligence?

A key component of healthcare intelligence is the capacity to analyze and forecast many aspects of patient care, including physician collaboration and the distribution of available resources.