In my previous blog on “the patient-centricity era,” I had highlighted five key areas that healthcare organizations need to focus on. In this blog I would like to focus on the patient’s data, and provide four new ideas for organizations to streamline the acquisition, analysis and storage of this crucial data.

Many of you know the story about e-Patient Dave, who started the movement called “Give me my damn data.” But the real question is, how many organizations are actually doing it? The premise here is for individuals to own the data, and if required, do more analytics with respect to their family members.

So here are four key areas to focus on to improve your consumers’ experience:

Data acquisition made simple: Health information exchanges are making it easier for healthcare organizations (hospitals, doctors, clinics & health insurance companies) to share patient data. Data acquisition takes place in various formats, like EDI transactions (837,834,835 etc), CCD and manual data submissions. Data can also be acquired from wearable devices like Fitbit, Smartwatch, etc. and from social media forums and websites. So the key questions are: how smart can our systems be to make sense of all the data, and how is this helping consumers?

Data storage: With data pouring in from various sources, storage and retrieval of data when required becomes a huge challenge. Organizations have to focus on the protection and safety of this acquired data and make smart decisions when it comes to data storage.

Data analytics: Once we have decided on data acquisition and data storage, the next challenge is to perform meaningful analytics to obtain the full benefit. Very few organizations have started to look into this, and there is growing discontent amongst consumers, as they do not see any meaningful information being passed on to them.

Behavioral change: This is one of the most discussed areas in healthcare and has been neglected for a long time. Unless the consumer is given the data and the associated benefits, as well as ensured the credibility of the information, there will be no change in behavior. The consumer has to make a call based on the data so that he can make behavioral change decisions.

So, the real questions are: how does today’s technology help us achieve this goal, and how long will it take for healthcare organizations to give consumers access to their data?