International Institute for Analytics (IIA) Research Study Confirms How Critical the Use of Analytics is to the Future of the Health Care and Life Sciences Industries
Tom Davenport reports finding at SAS Health Care and Life Sciences Executive Conference; IIA makes the Health Care and Life Sciences Research Council (HARC) a permanent research offering to its clients
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass., May 13 2011 -
The International Institute for Analytics (IIA)
, a technology and market research organization focused exclusively on serving the business analytics industry, today released findings from its six-month Health Care and Life Sciences Analytics Research Council (HARC). This project provided a practitioner-sourced evaluation and review of the most promising applications of analytics in the health care and life sciences industries. IIA's founder,
Tom Davenport
, presented results of its recently concluded HARC during his keynote at the 8th Annual SAS Health Care & Life Sciences Executive Conference (May 11-12, Cary, NC).
IIA also announced the launch of a permanent HARC service on July 1, 2011 as a subscription based service that uses an experience-based research approach to uncover the strategic value obtained by payers, providers, and pharmaceutical companies from using analytics.
According to Jack Phillips, CEO, IIA, "The changing environment in health care and life sciences brings new pressure on decision-making and places a greater premium on analytics. We believe the targeted application of analytics will fundamentally change how health care and life science organizations operate, how patient care is delivered and paid for."
Extensive Benefits of Analytics in Health Care and Life Sciences
Analytics in health care is an issue for several sectors of the health care industry involving patients, providers, payers and the health care technology industries.
- Biological and medical sciences can transform the health care industry and hold considerable potential to drive change and improve health outcomes. In industrialized economies, an analytics-driven transformation can aid health care providers in offering better and more cost-effective health care.
- Life sciences companies, which provide the drugs and medical devices that have changed health care over the past several decades, also employ analytics. On the R&D and clinical side a reshaping of analytics yet to be mastered by any drug company is resulting from the advent of personalize medicine. On the commercial analytics side, there is new data - from marketing drugs direct to consumers, rather than through physicians - and new urgency to rein in costs by increasing marketing and sales effectiveness.
- Patients - the ultimate consumers of health care - are better informed because of analytics. They are equipped to decide which providers are most effective, whether the chosen treatment will work, and in some payment structures, whether they are getting the best price possible.
Analytics can use historical data to model future trends, to evaluate decisions, and to measure performance in order to improve business processes and outcomes. Analytical-based tools that can change health care include data, statistical methods and analyses, and rigorous, quantitative approaches to decision making about patients and their care. These analytical tools are at the heart of 'evidence-based medicine.'
The initial 6-month HARC study, launched in November 2010, brought together approximately 50 individuals from the largest health care and life sciences organizations for a peer-sourced review of health care and life sciences analytics. The HARC was led by Tom Davenport, IIA research/faculty leader and author of Competing on Analytics, and Professor Marcia Test of the Harvard School of Public Health. Key findings of analytics to provider and payer organizations include:
- Plenty of basic data work still lies ahead, but proliferation of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) will lead to rapid growth in descriptive analytics
- Many unexplored opportunities for predictive analysis
- Significant threat to business from organizations with more refined analytical capabilities
- Transaction-focused culture in payers inhibits analytical orientation
- Clear financial impact of analytics is not yet apparent among most payers
- Easier to establish strong analytical capabilities in a separate organization
- Experimentation with predictive analytics for disease management and hospitalization is growing