Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 20 | Page 81

INTELLIGENT VERTICAL are commonly linked to primary illnesses so healthcare providers know what symptoms to watch for. This early warning can help care providers treat patients at the first sign of an exacerbated or secondary illness, and avoid readmissions reimbursement penalties. Clinical analysis also helps healthcare facilities allocate staff and device resources in real time in order to eliminate bottlenecks, reduce patient waiting times and provide optimal patient care and coverage. These proactive steps contribute to improved patient satisfaction and outcomes. providers to make decisions based on data offering supported foresight instead of guesses. Rich data and analytics give decision makers the ability to actually affect future results with a reasonable degree of confidence in the outcome. In conclusion, new health data analysis tools provide expanded opportunities for healthcare providers to streamline operations, improve patient care and outcomes, and reduce costs for the practice and the patient. decisions they could based on personal experience or data manually aggregated from databases and spreadsheets. Making decisions based on spreadsheets introduces unnecessary risk because spreadsheets are notoriously error-prone and labour intensive. Data management software is exponentially faster, more powerful and more reliable than manual legacy tools such as Excel, which were originally designed for finance. By leveraging advanced information management technology, healthcare providers can capture, classify and present aggregated data formerly trapped in structured and unstructured data formats. Once managed, this data can be used for business and clinical analysis that benefits the business, patients and population. By gathering critical data trapped in silos and systems across the business and practice, applying predictive analysis and making results available, clinicians, administrators, key decision makers and healthcare practices can lower costs for the organisation and improve quality of life for everyone. For healthcare providers, this real- or near-real-time data analysis can improve patient care and quality of life because it is based on data gathered from silos across the entire practice, and is free of human intervention (therefore reducing error). Clinical and business analytics allow administrators and care David Whitton has worked in document management related businesses since 1989 starting in document scanning with Bell and Howell in 1996 covering Germany, Austria and Switzerland. His first encounter with the Middle East was at Fujitsu in 1999 where he increased the focus on KSA and the Gulf dramatically. ¡ David Whitton, General Manager of Kodak Alaris for the Middle East 2. Allow care providers to see if treatments are effective. Clinical analysis allows healthcare providers to monitor the effect of treatments over time with individuals or groups. This real-time data can help clinicians change an ineffective or sub-effective course of treatment earlier in the patient care cycle, in contrast to the traditional ‘watch and wait’ scenario. By changing a course of treatment earlier, healthcare providers can head off secondary disease, provide a structured, reassuring course of treatment, and improve the treatment effects for the patient and the overall success rate of the practice. 3. Enable decision making based on foresight. In the past, administrators and clinicians had to make the best www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 81