BioSpectrum Asia: Cognizant’s Senior Vice President and Global Delivery Head of Healthcare Writes About the Role of Big Data in Connected Health

“As the healthcare sector around the world shifts towards a patient-centric paradigm, patients and healthcare organizations need better and smarter ways to access, interpret and store the large amounts of data surrounding each patient,” writes Sundar Subramanian. “Data management is crucial for the connected health strategy of any healthcare organization.” Excerpts:

“Big data offers healthcare organizations the opportunity to achieve multiple benefits, including improved quality of patient care and reduced costs. By generating actionable insights from information in clinical, non-clinical, and consumer-enabled wellness sources, these players can identify opportunities and predict behavior and outcomes in order to improve the overall healthcare system, making connected health a reality.

Mobile computing and big data are central to improving healthcare outcomes and quality. Mobile computing provides data that is aggregated into big data warehouses with other data including medical, administrative, and demographic data. As health platforms support multiple medical devices, rather than just fitness trackers, analytics can be effectively used to mine this information, spot trends, draw  inferences, and make predictions that can then be shared with healthcare constituents to improve quality outcomes and optimize the spend.

Consumer engagement and awareness form a critical driver in the new patient-centric model. A large part of total healthcare costs is heavily influenced by consumer behavior. Getting patients to change their behavior is therefore critical to changing the wellness equation. Changing behavior requires addressing patients’ mindsets at different psychological stages in the disease journey, from prevention to diagnosis to care. It contains several key components: patient activation, patient engagement, patient motivation, and patient retention.

Data plays a part in patient activation, which refers to patients’ ability and willingness to proactively manage their health. Patients are increasingly using self-tracking devices to manage their activity levels. The data generated from such devices, which forms a part of what we define as individual’s Code Halo, is combined with other technologies, such as social media, gamification and predictive analytics, to generate user insights. These insights can lead to positive self-management behavior changes in patients with chronic conditions.

The application of big data and analytics in healthcare helps leverage genomic data to personalize treatment for rare and deadly diseases, identify fraud, waste and abuse, and improve patient compliance in health management programs.

Moving forward, healthcare organizations need to devote time and resources to planning and implementation of big data and mobile computing solutions and realize potential benefits.”

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