The 2017 Healthcare Analytics Market Trends Report is now available. Building on the 2014 and 2016 editions of this report, Chilmark returned to the market this year to assess critical changes in vendor solutions to see how well they map to provider needs. This report reveals that analytics vendor solutions have matured but struggle to exploit new sources of data in a rapidly transforming industry. In addition, analytics solutions and care management applications are more tightly linked now and show promise for moving analytics-derived insights closer to the point of care.
This report traditionally focused on the reporting needs of clinicians, care managers, and other users seeking to improve clinical quality and monitor costs and utilization under governmental and private payer value-based reimbursement (VBR) programs. On balance, vendor solutions offer a reasonable way to put this kind of information into the hands of busy clinicians provided the HCO has prepared the ground. They use EHR-derived and paid claims data to help clinicians understand how they can impact quality, cost, and utilization in their patient panels.
But market need is broader than reporting. The tremendous variety of healthcare providers – from solo practitioners to large AMCs – means that no solution is universal. Despite differences, all providers big and small are engaged in the transition to value-based care and payments. For some clinicians the advent of PHM has also been an introduction to the uses and benefits of analytics. Provider organizations realize that the reporting applications described in this report have whetted user’s appetites for analytics in other contexts.
HCOs want to see these products gradually expand beyond quality, cost, and utilization reports to support other clinical and financial needs. In addition, and possibly more importantly, we expect them to become more broadly useful in workflow than through reports and dashboards. This is not to say that users do not need reports and dashboards; demand for more reports and dashboards continues to grow. But provider organizations are also interested in embedding analytics more deeply into existing workflows and applications more broadly. This will help make analytics more actionable.
EHR and claims data will also need to be supplemented with a variety of emerging data types including clinician notes, device, genomic, and patient-generated data. External data including social determinants of health (SDoH) will also figure more prominently over time. Venues outside of office- and hospital-based venues will need access to this data and can also make valuable contributions to analytics-based applications.
Analytics technology is also changing and evolving. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, Big Data and NoSQL are making it possible for developers to leverage complex analysis of large quantities of data. The results of this analysis can be user not only for user applications but also to prepare analytics-ready data stores.
So the overall conclusion is that vendor solutions have improved and HCOs are getting better at leveraging them. But it is also true that the industry is on the cusp of applying the technology in more contexts and incorporating new technologies. The contributions that analytics can make to healthcare has only scratched the surface.
We will host a webinar on Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 1:00 PM Eastern to review some of the material in the report. Registration can be found here.
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