Report finds acquisiton of trustworthy data the most important aspect of health care data analytics

The ability to get the data is the number one obstacle that will slow the adoption of data analytics in health care, according to IBM’s report, The value of analytics in healthcare: from insights to outcomes, writes Care and Cost blog.  The report found it is the “unlocking” of data that is the biggest challenge in the healthcare vertical: IBM found that organizational barriers plague healthcare organizations who are trying to get at data, but cannot. Cultures that do not encouraging sharing information exacerbate this problem — not data standards or lack of having enough data. An aspect of this is the issue of who owns the data and data governance. Another substantial problem was coined by one health system CIO interviewed by IBM who said, “Our executives don’t know how bad the data is.” Thus data quality and integrity, once “unlocked,” could compromise the analytics and insights drawn from the information. Trustworthiness of the data, and timeliness, will help ensure quality outcomes in healthcare data analytics.