Healthcare Analytics for Washington DC

Executives in Washington, DC are very interested in finding out more on how to go about developing healthcare reporting systems. A few questions they may ask. What is their healthcare enterprise’s level of analytical maturity? Analysis is an evolution of delivering key decision-making information throughout the enterprise, rather than as a single initiative. And the analytical maturity of an enterprise determines how it can leverage analysis and close the analytical gap.

An analytical framework has been defined by pretty much everybody that works in IT. Most people agree that the four key levels are: infrastructure, functionality, organization and business. These levels can be translated into an information evolution model for analytical applications.

What is the importance of this? Very simply, those that try to define and implement a complete enterprise analytical solution in one step may end up taking far too long to finish building it. Long enough so that they end up looking for another job. Most likely, the analytical solution delivered will not meet needs because, if it takes too long, requirements will usually change enough after an initiative is initiated to render it useless. I believe that enterprises need to assess the overall maturity of their analytical initiative and aim to add value incrementally, rather than use an all-at-once approach. There is not a cookie cutter approach because results and challenges differ, depending on the level of analytical maturity.

An assessment of needs for healthcare analysis should include: choosing an analytical software architecture for analysis and reporting, a hardware platform to host the software framework, a data integration approach and, of course, storage.

Results are usually measured in terms of more-effective use of IT investments, reduced total cost of ownership and improved operational efficiency. Challenges, outside of the political arena, primarily occur with infrastructure and functionality. Results are also usually associated with having one version of analysis-derived truth, which improves the management of multiple departments.

Is adequate planning enough to ascertain success? Not really. Watch for challenges that occur at the business level, such as: shifting business processes and obscure methodologies to leverage new analytical capabilities. Realize that there may be new changing business goals or objectives, based on insight gained. However, plan the plan and execute your plan.