Recent articles and tweets emphasize that Big Data, or Analytics, would improve the bottom line for a company as long as they are prepared to take advantage of this benefit. Some Life Sciences (those that offer pharmaceuticals and medical devices products) and Healthcare companies have a need for new tools if they are going to take full advantage of Big Data. Today companies have enterprise systems that need IT people to give the requisite report or summary analysis. Newer analytics tools like Tableau Software compliment the installed base of enterprise software with the added benefit of an intuitive way of doing user analysis that focuses more on collaboration and portability.
Backdrop
The key benefits from Big Data for Healthcare (and I will include Life Sciences in this because of the connection to pricing/payments) includes*:
- Improvements in Drug Trial Safety
- Disease surveillance
- Prescribed treatments
- Patient Outcomes
Today we still have data stored like this:
Companies have enterprise systems with data cubes and traditional spreadsheets that need IT to extract the data:
So how can I prioritize?
I agree with the opinion of Dr. Rado Kotorov in his article “The CIOs Top 3 priorities for 2015”:
- The CIO role will transform from a technology leader to a business leader
- Manage data as the enterprise’s most valuable strategic asset
- Make Business Intelligence (BI) pervasive and ubiquitous
Consider the following
Change is imminent so consider a tool that your users can easily leverage to do key analysis, and I don’t mean Excel spreadsheets or Access database. Yesterday I went through a demo of the Tableau software (rank high in terms of “Ability to Execute” and as a “Leader” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI and Analytics). In summary they have solved the problem of connecting to multiple source systems. The product is also easy to set-up and more importantly provides a means to allow for collaboration with others.
In my opinion, reaping the benefit of Big Data means finding ways to turn IT systems to supporting the users to help the business. As leaders in the industry you need to find ways to allow users to unleash their creativity and help the organization analyze and solve business problems. This may mean an additional cost in the short-term. Alternatively you can wait for the right resources or invest in replacing key parts of your enterprise landscape – either choice may not be as appealing as selecting tools to make data analysis easier. I would recommend Tableau Software…
Would you agree I am open to your opinion, so tell me what you think?
Thanks,
Jim