By the time you finish reading this sentence, terabytes upon terabytes of data will have been generated and stored in databases around the world. Across almost every imaginable industry, the collection of massive amounts of data sculpts the way companies shift their processes to stay at peak relevance to their clients. Nowhere is this more true than in healthcare technology, where we now have tools that can collect high-value data in real-time at incredible speeds.
Unfortunately, for high-risk patients—that small segment of a patient population for which preventative care management is of utmost importance—we continue to live in a world where the value and velocity of our data don’t match. Simply put, we’re getting plenty of data. It just isn’t always the type of data we want. And we don’t always get it fast enough to make a real difference in care.
I spoke with Jeff Emerson, CEO at ComplexCare Solutions— a company focused on providing high-value assessment and care management for a daily census of over 12,000 members—about changes we can make in our data collection to optimize its value.
“Part of the problem is that our analytics are almost exclusively based on claims data,” said Jeff. “This data lags the episodes of care by 60-120 days or more. We need to collect the data more promptly and make it available for analysis during the patient’s episode of care.”
To do this, companies need access to an infrastructure that allows us not only to capture data in real-time, but to merge data from different sources to create patient profiles that go beyond just a state of health. How close is the nearest provider? Does the patient have a car to get there? What social and behavioral factors—such as economic or job status—are impacting the patient’s health or treatment?
“What does show promise is the proliferation of wireless technologies which can monitor a patient’s health and transmit, by telemetry, the data to a central source,” explained Jeff. “We need to capture and incorporate these new data feeds into our care plans and begin to blend additional data sources—think consumer, housing, and smartphones—to allow us to create more accurate and actionable profiles of our patients.”
Even with our compass set to the right direction, our biggest hurdle is the lack of interoperability in integrating the multiple sources needed to complete patient profiles. That’s one of the main reasons Synaptic pushes the boundaries of cloud-based population health. With Synapse, we are able to allow providers to immediately update and access this wealth of information—closing the gap between volume and value.