Data-Driven Healthcare: How Analytics and BI are Transforming the Industry

CHAPTER 9 A Call to Action

Rapid change sweeps aside the status quo and those that defend it (the stuck former geniuses and the stuck bureaucrats). It replaces them with those willing to leap.

—Seth Godin

In the preface of my first book, Healthcare Business Intelligence, I shared my personal story of how I became interested in healthcare. My journey through healthcare as a young patient helped me realize my career. Coincidentally, as I came to the end of this book, my healthcare journey that started more than 20 years ago took a sudden turn that required additional intervention. Frankly, it was a shock. I had thought that perhaps I was one of the lucky ones.

As I started down this path again, I was faced with many difficult choices. Of course, those choices are different now, being a 40-year-old versus a teenager. I also have a different perspective, a professional one, which makes me question and analyze all aspects of healthcare. It's easy to get lost in the details of this work and forget about the patient.

What would it mean to a patient, in this case me, if we became data driven? I suspect that in many cases a patient wouldn't notice too many differences. That's because most care is data driven. The surgical procedure that I had was based on years of research and honed to perfection to reduce errors and infection rates. The follow-up medication management is also based on decades of research, some of which I participated in 20 years ago. But you don't have to look much ...