Health IT

Healthcare analytics finally maturing, SAS top doc says

In an interview with MedCity News at HIMSS15 in Chicago, SAS Center for Health Analytics and Insights CMO Dr. Graham Hughes said that said healthcare providers and payers alike are looking at complete analytics platforms now, no longer just taking piecemeal approaches. And they are looking to the cloud.

Healthcare analytics is maturing.

“The hype of a couple years ago is starting to get close to reality,” said Dr. Graham Hughes, chief medical officer of the SAS Center for Health Analytics and Insights, Cary, N.C.

In an interview with MedCity News at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference in Chicago, Hughes said that said healthcare providers and payers alike are looking at complete analytics platforms now, no longer just taking piecemeal approaches. And they are looking to the cloud.

There is a “lack of talent in the industry,” so healthcare organizations are coming to SAS for cloud analytics services, Hughes reported.

“People want to stand that up quickly, so they want to use the cloud,” Hughes said. “Payers and providers want to use the same technologies,” he added.

In healthcare, people are getting serious about population health management — including patient engagement — and about retail-style analytics, according to Hughes. In retail, companies apply analytics to manage their supply chains and to learn shoppers’ habits. “In healthcare, it’s understanding the patient’s likely risk,” Hughes said.

Now, health systems are taking a “unified approach to understanding population risk” and to figure out ways to engage with specific patient populations, he said. As value-based payments gain in popularity, SAS is helping customers analyze care variations to determine the upsides and downsides of managing variations, according to Hughes.

Retail also uses location technology to make offers to patients, based on their habits, as they approach store locations. The same can happen in healthcare. “Your phone might give you an alert that says, ‘You just walked past Walgreens or CVS. Go fill your meds,'” Hughes said.

 

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