Using Personal Data to Drive Effective Treatment Plans
Data is increasingly becoming one of the most critical factors in managing healthcare outcomes for patients. Physicians are collecting information on their patients from the first phone call to the office up to the appointment and beyond. How a physician handles this data can have a major impact on patients’ health care outcomes, particularly those doctors who see many patients.
Many doctors are using centralized software not only to keep track of data for their patients but to transfer that data to other specialists and to receive medical records from other doctors. This helps reduce efficiencies, speed up treatment times, and streamline regional health care operations. Here are some key ways you can use personal data and technology to create more effective treatment plans.
Enhancing Personalized Medicine by Using Big Data Technologies
How many times have you seen a doctor about an ailment, only for them to go “There’s a lot of that going around,” and default to the most likely outcome? That is increasingly becoming a thing of the past as precision medicine becomes the new best practice in the medical field.
Also called personalized medicine, this is a field that makes increased use of personal data to figure out the best health outcome for each patient. Rather than just relying on statistics and basic details collected at the appointment, it starts analyzing each case even before the first meeting.
Instead of relying simply on a collection of symptoms and self-reported feelings from the patient, it considers each patient’s environment, lifestyle, family history, and genetic profile to create a more holistic picture of the patient’s needs.
If this sounds like an involved project, that’s because it is – which is why the doctor doesn’t do it alone. Doctors who use this system make good use of data-driven software that can analyze a patient’s profile in seconds and create a picture not just of the most likely scenarios, but of what challenges they could face in the future.
Today, patients are seeing more doctors than ever – it’s common to have a general practitioner, one who might have childhood health records, and any specialists. Each of these doctors have one piece of the puzzle, and a robust electronic health record can be the key to putting it together and creating a fuller picture of the patient’s needs.
It’s important to communicate with the doctors in the area and develop a system for communicating about patients who use multiple doctors. The faster the health data can be shared, the easier it is to develop a thorough health plan.
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The Role of Data Analytics in Healthcare
You’ll find that managing your data effectively makes it easier to keep track of your patients and figure out how best to help them. This manifests in multiple ways.
It’s important for doctors to have a good working relationship, including sharing data as needed. You’ll be dealing with a lot of PHI, and sharing it securely is critical. What is PHI in healthcare? It stands for protected health information, and this is material including demographic data, medical history, tests, and insurance or billing information. This is all protected and can only be shared with other medical personnel with the patient’s permission.
It also becomes easier to streamline your administrative processes through a data-driven system. How much time is lost in medical offices repeatedly filling out the same forms? Too much, often both for the doctor and for their support staff. With electronic systems, most forms can often be automatically filled out without needing the doctor to do anything.
Access to the data of a large number of patients can also make it easier to spot patterns before they become a problem. If multiple patients report the same symptom out of nowhere, it may be a hint that an epidemic is coming in the area. Early detection of diseases and even prediction of new diseases becomes much easier with the use of data analytics in healthcare.
A Better Doctor’s Office
The doctor is the centerpiece of any medical office, but they don’t work alone. More doctors are using data management software to streamline their operations. This makes their job easier, and ensures better and more thorough care for their patients.
An effective EHR system and communication with other medical offices make transmitting information easier. This makes it possible to keep data secure and easier to notice patterns early and take action. This is how the average medical office is moving towards the future.
