Title: Enhancing healthcare value by applying proactive measures: the role for business analytics and intelligence

Authors: Nilmini Wickramasinghe; Jonathan L. Schaffer

Addresses: Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Bldg BC Level 4, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood VIC 3125, Australia; Epworth HealthCare, 89 Bridge Rd, Richmond, Vic 3121, Australia ' Digital Health and Orthopaedic Surgery, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Desk A41, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA

Abstract: Healthcare is one of the most data rich and data generating industries. Yet, these data tend to be discontinuous, incomplete, lacking standardisation, or even erroneous and unusable. Pressure is increasing for healthcare organisations to provide increased value by improving health outcomes at a lower cost. In order to address these challenges, business analytics and intelligence (BA/BI) are critical strategic tools used to methodically analyse the wealth of seemingly disparate healthcare data sets and provide enhancement of healthcare's overall performance through data driven decision making. For acute and chronic oncology care processes, these pressures are mounting given the rising costs and increasingly complicated processes under the rising numbers and ages of the population. Given these pressures to improve healthcare value, this study proposes a systematic framework for the application of business analytics at one of the largest tertiary hospitals in Melbourne, Australia, in the quest for optimising healthcare.

Keywords: business analytics; BA; business intelligence; BI; clinical decision making; real-time analytics; evidence-based decisions; cancer treatment; oncology; action research methodology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2018.098376

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2018 Vol.17 No.2/3, pp.128 - 144

Received: 15 Sep 2017
Accepted: 11 Jun 2018

Published online: 18 Mar 2019 *

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