Data Visualization: The Knight in Shining Armour of the Healthcare Industry?

Getting down to brass tacks and making the best medical decisions requires a handful of data. Various healthcare data sources collect information about patients, diseases, and logistics, but interpreting and converting this information into data-driven, actionable insights is complicated. To bring it all together, analyze, and understand them takes time. It is not possible, particularly when the hospitals are running very hot. That is when organizational data needs to tell a story with the help of powerful business intelligence. When BI becomes the system’s brain, and data visualization in healthcare becomes the heart.

To Set-out:

Let’s start by discussing data’s role in improving a country’s healthcare system. We learned throughout the pandemic that we required far more detailed and timely data. From a strategic to a tactical level, we must fully comprehend the state of our citizens’ health. Those countries that used data were able to beat the pandemic in a better way.

Big data analytics in healthcare not only provides information about the people infected but can also be used to improve operational efficiency and manage the workforce and logistics. Big data analytics in healthcare can be used to monitor patient outcomes, identify care gaps, assess adherence to standards of care, and do other operational evaluations of efficient care. Data aids care teams in identifying issues with facilities, supplies, staffing, or equipment that could hinder their capacity to satisfy clinical needs.

Tailored business intelligence solutions for healthcare needs offer essential insights into business operations, giving key stakeholders the capacity to model and improve policies, programs, and other interventions, predict potential problems, and analyze their possible future effects. All this data can help everyone in a hospital make reliable decisions instantly.

Are too many of these data points overwhelming?

There was a time when hospital staff ran around with notepads to collect data about patients. But that is not enough in dealing with a global pandemic like COVID-19. Today we receive ten times more information than before. But the problem here is that you have too much healthcare data stored in different sources, however, you may not be empowered to derive the true value out of it. This is where the combo of BI, Big data analytics in healthcare and data visualization can help with.

Data visualization in healthcare reveals patterns of diseases, infection rates, subtle correlations, and connections between different healthcare systems. We must understand that healthcare professionals may not come with a degree in data science or technology to analyze the data. However, with the help of interactive healthcare dashboards, every employee from various departments of a healthcare organization can now have access to data insights to make decisions in times of emergency. Because data visualization is far simpler to understand than a spreadsheet, you can identify the areas where you must take immediate action to save lives. With several interactive features and filter-down options, healthcare professionals can access information without batting an eyelash.

According to a research published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information in India, data visualization in healthcare has always been crucial in the field of public health during outbreaks for analyzing data and guiding response measures. Visualizations have proved helpful in the fight against Ebola because of the cross-filtering advanced feature, which enables a filter to operate simultaneously across multiple graphs or tables.

The Government of India is dedicated to creating information databases that researchers may exchange on various topics. This involves ensuring that all unit data from significant publicly financed surveys linked to health is accessible to the general public in a format conducive to research. To make wise decisions in this situation, all healthcare workers must be knowledgeable with reliable data and visualization approaches.

Examples like this represent how important it is to visualize data to capture the values quickly. At the time of urgency, it is imperative to filter down and get the information required as early as possible. In such a scenario, visually representing the data can help healthcare workers to take a step forward and make decisions instantly.

Let us go back to the situation when the second wave of the coronavirus hit the world. Charts and graphs would have been beneficial to represent the data from the first and second waves and analyze both situations effectively. These kinds of visual graphics can also split patients’ information according to their age, gender, region, and other factors effectively, which helps in categorizing and comparing data. And imagine if you get all this data popping on your interactive healthcare dashboards in a storytelling format.

What are Interactive Dashboards?

Clinicians and other healthcare professionals can utilize interactive healthcare dashboards to get immediate patient or hospital logistics data to analyze the situation better and improve patient safety. Healthcare dashboards can gather additional insights on the best activities suggested when aligned with predictive AI capabilities. A case in point would be using data to determine how to increase the likelihood that the patient would overcome the infection after a vaccination dose.

Hence, Lumenore provides AI-powered NLQ-based modules to get insights in simple English for professionals in the healthcare industry. The modules are:

In short..

Data visualization in healthcare can be used by professionals in this industry to manage patients, forecast and improve patient care delivery quickly, and establish new standards and policies for hospital administration. It helps access data and insights without technical support and immediately makes critical decisions, which is very important in the healthcare industry.