Let's face it, if you have been to any healthcare industry conferences lately, you have heard about analytics and more importantly, "predictive analytics". Wow! Can you imagine the power of "prediction" at your fingertips? What if you could tell the number of people who are going walk through your door any given day before it happened? What if, you could tell the number of patients who are going to be cancer patients in the next few years? That would be awesome, wouldn't it? The question is, would it?
Let's take a scenario....
Let's say that I now have the predictive capability of knowing that 3 out of my 10 patients will get cancer in the next three months. Great! Which 3? What type of cancer? What can I do to prevent that from happening? The answer is, probably nothing. It is not specific enough. While there are some general changes you can make to your treatment plan, the results will likely be a hit or a miss.
So why spend so much time, effort and money on prediction? To me, a better scenario would be a retrospective inspection of what caused something to happen. In this scenario, you can drill down to the specific root cause of what went wrong and it would be specific enough for you to be able to fix. Much better, "measurable" ROI, in my opinion.
So, when choosing to go after predictive capabilities, understand your goal for it. Look to see if there is a measurable ROI for it. If not, don't try to predict, analyze.
Let's take a scenario....
Let's say that I now have the predictive capability of knowing that 3 out of my 10 patients will get cancer in the next three months. Great! Which 3? What type of cancer? What can I do to prevent that from happening? The answer is, probably nothing. It is not specific enough. While there are some general changes you can make to your treatment plan, the results will likely be a hit or a miss.
So why spend so much time, effort and money on prediction? To me, a better scenario would be a retrospective inspection of what caused something to happen. In this scenario, you can drill down to the specific root cause of what went wrong and it would be specific enough for you to be able to fix. Much better, "measurable" ROI, in my opinion.
So, when choosing to go after predictive capabilities, understand your goal for it. Look to see if there is a measurable ROI for it. If not, don't try to predict, analyze.
