The goal of business intelligence is to support better decision-making in business. The direction of modern healthcare is evidence-based medicine driven by the proper use of data. Clearly, the combination of business intelligence in healthcare would seem to be a match made in heaven. On the one hand, hospitals have terabytes of data about patients, procedures, pharmaceuticals, and diagnoses. They have a veritable goldmine full of data and information that can be used to drive superior patient treatment and care. If only they had a way to mine that data, though. The reality is that many of today’s healthcare systems are a discrete collection of legacy systems that do not share information readily, making it very difficult for a clinician to utilize all of the data that has been captured in a meaningful way for the patient’s best care.
Is there a solution? Perhaps…. Read my latest IT Briefcase column on BI and Healthcare.
