HEALTHCARE IT Data-driven healthcare is here: Are you ready?

The healthcare sector is undergoing a radical transformation. While it is evolving to meet the dynamic regulatory, patient care and corporate challenges, data has emerged as the key factor to reduce costs of treatment, predict outbreaks of epidemics, avoid p reventable diseases, and improve the quality of life in general.

According to IDC, the global datasphere is expected to be 175 zettabytes in 2025, with healthcare expected to be the fastest growing sector.

Healthcare service providers are increasingly leveraging datasets to optimise today’s treatment delivery methods, to enhance hospital performance overall. There are three fundamental realities that are currently shaping healthcare data — it is siloed, it is growing, and it is under attack, which is why a cloud infrastructure is becoming critical to sustaining the healthcare industry’s digital goals.

Trends reshaping healthcare data

The pandemic has been cited as the number one reason for driving transformation across industries, and healthcare was probably the biggest generator of data. In fact, data has been pivotal in making healthcare more equitable.

Data is increasingly being used to ascertain the gaps impeding quality healthcare for all people. It has played a significant role in improving and expanding remote patient monitoring and engagement.

According to an expansive research by Markets N Research, the global electronic health record software market is expected to exhibit strong growth, reaching USD 47.2 billion by 2028. This significant dependency on digital data has consequently con- tributed to the spurt in ransomware attacks against healthcare organisations. The 2022 edition of IBM security study titled ‘Cost of a Data Breach Report’ states that an average healthcare data breach costs can easily surpass $10M. The healthcare industry is also the one most likely to pay the ransom, given the critical sensitivity of the data held.

With regulations encompassing various areas of healthcare business emerging as a formidable challenge, companies in this vertical need to analyse and report on the data they are collecting. The need of the hour, therefore, is access to quality, current and comprehensive data. Considering these trends, data can come across as a double-edged sword. While it holds immense potential, if not managed properly, it can also prove detrimental to business and technology.

To effectively address data management challenges, healthcare providers need a simple, fast, purpose-built, and comprehensive data management platform that spans across the enterprise and can unlock the power of data to solve critical industry challenges.

Cloud-based data recovery solutions are steadily becoming the go-to choice for Indian enterprises as it helps them effectively deal with the majority of issues surrounding traditional backup and recovery solutions. It allows them to scale up or down by adding required cloud computing resources, leverage a pay-asyou-go pricing model, store data across multiple geographic locations, etc.

Aholistic data management platform

To unlock value for business and technology, healthcare enterprises must opt for a platform which will allow for several critical functions. The solution should have the ability to ingest multiple and growing data streams from varied sources such as patient-generated data, claims and multiple EHRs. It should also be able to standardise and normalise the data so that it can be utilised in multiple ways — support analytics efforts, shared outside the organisation etc.

An effective data management platform must mirror the dynamics of the fastevolving and growing healthcare industry. It should possess the capability to support rapidly changing technologies and movement of data across various applications and storage platforms.

Besides, it must be easily manageable to reduce costs, drive the standardisation of data policies, minimise organisational disruption, and facilitate operational efficiencies.

Transforming to become data driven

As the healthcare industry further moves towards data standardization, there will be an increase in the deployment and development of technologies such as precision health, predictive analytics, and mHealth that leverage data generated by multiple systems, across multiple organisations.

Healthcare organisations, therefore, have no choice but to become data driven and digitally inclusive. As the healthcare sector turns ‘smart’ by replacing the conventional working models with cutting-edge technology pioneered models, business and technology leaders will have to ameliorate their data management strategies to align with these cutting-edge models.

A unified platform that can protect modern IT environments while delivering a consolidated view of vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and potential threats could be a game changer in making clinical data easily accessible and actionable while ensuring effective, personalised patient care.