As a result of the increasing availability and understanding of Big Data, more and more industries are leveraging analytics to improve their products or services. Regardless of the industry or vertical, there are core commonalities; lower cost and increase value.
A German university hospital, based in Giessen and Marburg, is looking to Big Data for medical cost reduction and increased diagnostic success rates. Typically, doctors diagnose 1,000 patients who are then able to receive appropriate treatment. With 6,000 patients awaiting diagnosis for rare conditions, to increase the number of diagnoses the solution is being sought within a central database. Rare diseases take an estimated 5 years to properly diagnose, in some cases 30 years. By this time, it is often too late for treatment which is why this university hospital is shifting its approach from hiring more doctors to leveraging data found within historical medical records.
“[Joseph] Jiminez, CEO of Switzerland’s Novartis, is proposing a radical solution that would overhaul the system of paying for drugs. Instead of paying by volume, the bill will be calculated by effectiveness of treatments. ‘We have to change how we define value, and we need data to do that,’ he said.
That data would come in the form of “real world outcomes” – working out how much a drug is helping a patient’s illness. Jiminez recognizes that such a system would be fraught with challenges that could not be solved by artificial intelligence alone.”
