Dashboard development, predictive analytics top investment priorities for healthcare firms

A survey of 400 respondents which includes C-suite, vice president, and director level executives confirmed implementation of and utilisation of business intelligence (BI) and analytics platforms result in better decision-making across all segments of a healthcare organisation.

The study, which has been conducted by HIMSS Analytics on behalf of Qlik, found 56 percent of healthcare organisations that are the early adopters of BI platforms improve overall patient care, significantly reduce healthcare costs, while meeting reporting requirements and driving new opportunities to enhance population health.

In addition, 48 percent have confirmed they are able to make faster and more accurate decisions, while 47 percent believe the use of BI and analytics platforms result in cost saving.

However, implementing a BI and analytics platform doesn’t come without challenges. Among the top barrier to healthcare organisations fully realizing the potential of BI and analytics platforms (with 42 percent responding) is end-user adoption. When combining the lack of data quality (41 percent) and challenges related to aggregating disparate data sources (27 percent), decision-makers are left relying on outdated spreadsheets and manual processes to analyse data.

In addition, limitations of clinical workflow integration (29 percent), dashboard capabilities (27 percent), reporting capabilities (26 percent), cultural resistance (22 percent) and solution integration (20 percent) are some of the other challenges.

As the value of BI and analytics tools become more widely understood among decision makers, integrating BI and analytics solutions with existing applications and systems is a top investment priority with 36 percent of respondents citing further investment during the next 12-24 months.

Dashboard development and predictive analytics were two other top investment priorities with 36 percent and 31 percent, respectively. Interestingly, end-user training was cited as an investment priority by 18 percent of respondents.