Healthcare Industry Works to Leverage Big Data

Taking advantage of big data could result in $300 billion in increased annual value for the healthcare industry, according to a 2011 McKinsey report. However, the industry lags behind other industries when it comes to using big data to make informed decisions and improve efficiencies.

Much progress has been made on digitizing patient records and pressure mounting to lower costs and improve efficiency and patient care. But healthcare providers still face significant obstacles in implementing analytics, business intelligence tools, and data warehousing due to the diversity of health data, according to a 2013 paper by the Institute for Health Technology Transformation (IHTT) designed to help executives from hospitals, health systems, and other provider organizations understand how to use big data to reduce costs.

The data is fragmented and nonstandardized, coming in a range of formats and generated by a multitude of stakeholders with differing interests, note the authors of “Transforming Health Care through Big Data.” And patient privacy must be carefully safeguarded.

According to McKinsey, the healthcare big data revolution is still in its early days, and the potential for value creation has not yet been claimed. An evaluation of the marketplace found that more than 200 businesses aimed at leveraging healthcare information have been established since 2010. The McKinsey analysts also note that “stakeholders that are committed to innovation will likely be the first to reap the rewards.”

One of those innovators, Robert Mangel, Director of Service Quality Research for Kaiser Permanente, will be speaking at the IEEE Computer Society’s Rock Stars of Big Data summit. Mangel will share his experience in using patient analytics to drive organizational decision-making. In his session, “Big Data Analytics: Linking Insights, Actions, and Outcomes to Drive Performance Improvement,” Mangel will discuss different opportunities and challenges through a discussion of specific examples in healthcare delivery, and a select set of other short use cases that illustrate the variety of emerging big data analytic efforts.

The California-based Kaiser Permanente, with more than 9 million members, is a pioneer in electronic health records. Its HealthConnect health information system, completed in March 2010 at an estimated cost of $6 billion, securely connects 9 million people to their healthcare teams, their personal health information, and the latest medical knowledge. Kaiser Permanente is estimated to have between 26.5 petabytes and 44 petabytes of patient data from its electronic health records alone—the equivalent of 4,400 Libraries of Congress, according to the IHTT.

At Kaiser, Mangel leads a national team that seeks to leverage patient experience analytics to inform strategic and operational decisions. A key focus of his work has been on integrating and analyzing large, disparate data sets to create actionable insights and drive performance improvement. Feedback loops between actions and outcomes are relatively longer and less direct, requiring different “Big Analytic” approaches to clarify and leverage these linkages, said Mangel.

Microsoft Office comes to Android phones

NEW YORK: Microsoft is bringing a pared-down version of its Office software to Android phones, but it won't work on Android tablets just as it doesn't on iPads. 


The software will be available starting July 31. It requires a $100-a-year subscription to Office and won't be sold separately. 

The new offering follows the release of an iphone version in June and brings an Office app to phones running the most widely used operating system on new smartphones. 

Microsoft is trying to make its Office 365 subscription more compelling, without removing an advantage that tablet computers running Microsoft's Windows system now have - the ability to run popular Office programs such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. 

"The release of this app shows that we're committed to keep providing additional value for Office 365 subscribers,'' the company wrote in a blog post. "Office 365 subscribers will now be able to access, view, and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents with Windows Phone, iPhone and Android phones.'' 

Microsoft is pushing subscriptions as a way to get customers to keep paying for a product that was historically sold in a single purchase. The company touts such benefits as the ability to run the package on multiple computers and get updates for free on a regular basis. However, a subscription can be more expensive than buying the package outright for just one or two computers. 

Microsoft said it designed Office Mobile for Android phone specifically for small-screen devices, even though many people will prefer editing documents on a tablet's larger screen. The company has a version for iPads and Android tablets, called Office Web Apps, but that runs on a Web browser and requires a constant online connection. The new Android software is an app that gets installed on the phone and can work offline. 

With a subscription, customers typically get to use Office on up to 10 devices. Five of them can be Windows or Mac computers or Windows tablets. The other five can be iPhones or Android phones. Window Phone come with Office installed and do not count toward the limit. 

In keeping the software off the iPad, the top-selling tablet computer, Forrester Research analyst J.P. Gownder has estimated that Microsoft is potentially ceding $1.4 billion a year in revenue, based on 10 percent of the 140 million i Pad owners paying for a $100 subscription. Gownder said failure to provide it on the iPad or Android tablets gives incentives for users to explore competing offerings such as Quick Office from Google and i Work from Apple. 

Like the other mobile versions, the new Android software is designed for lightweight use. For example, you can use it to view and edit an attachment sent by email. But it's not meant to create a complex spreadsheet from scratch. 

The new software requires Android 4.0 or later - the Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean flavors of Google's operating system. It's available through Google's online Play store. At first, it's available only in the US, though Microsoft plans to expand to 117 markets with versions in more than 30 languages. 

Microsoft did not announce any plans for Black Berry phons