Healthcare Big Data: Ideas for hospitals

When hospitals dig into Big Data, here’s where they should start

Everyone is telling hospital systems to dig into their data to improve their budgets and their patients. But where should they start? Ken Armstrong, a senior vice president of information technology and informatics at ProMedica, has his own starter guide for hospitals digging into healthcare big data. He was part of a panel discussion at the HIMSS 2012 conference in Las Vegas, and has been spending much of his time crunch data in order to cut costs and improve performance at ProMedica, which has health systems in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan. Armstrong says healthcare big data for hospitals begins with quality and satisfaction as well as re-admittance rates.

By Chris Seper on February 22, 2012 2:54 pm

MedCity News is providing in-depth coverage of HIMSS2012 as part of a special series sponsored by Hyland Software.

Everyone is telling hospital systems to dig into their data to improve their budgets and their patients. But where should they start?

Ken Armstrong, a senior vice president of information technology and informatics at ProMedica, has his own starter guide for hospitals digging into healthcare Big Data. He was part of a panel discussion at the HIMSS2012 conference in Las Vegas, and has been spending much of his time crunching data in order to cut costs and improve performance at ProMedica, which has health systems in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.

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Armstrong says healthcare Big Data for hospitals begins with quality and satisfaction, as well as readmittance rates.

“Data is really not useful until it’s information,” Armstrong said. “We have broken it up into two pieces,” which includes “concurrent data” that informs staff about things that are about to happen, and “trended data,” which is about strategic, long-term information.

[Photo from Flickr user Muffet]