HIMSS 2016 report: A good year ahead for data aficionados

The Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) organizes the largest health information technology conference in North America every year. This year’s event, held in Las Vegas, attracted about 42,000 attendees from around the world. About 1,300 health IT exhibitors showcased their products and services, and more than 300 education programs were presented. I attended this event to get a glimpse of the industry with a focus on healthcare analytics. It was encouraging to hear success stories in health analytics around the country.

Following are four key conference takeaways and trends to keep an eye on:

1. Precision medicine is close to reality.

Vanderbilt University presented a great talk on how analytics is playing a key role in developing precision medicine for cancer patients. Vanderbilt University has emerged as a national leader in precision medicine with 215,000 genetic samples linked to electronic health records without patient identifiers. Vanderbilt will also lead the direct volunteers pilot studies under the first grant in the federal Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program. Verily, formerly known as Google Life Sciences, will serve as an advisor for the project.

While precision medicine is a relatively new medical model, some academic medical centers are already applying aspects of precision medicines powered by data and analytics in some clinical areas to gain more insights. Precision medicine, when matured, can help clinicians detect which early stage cancer patients are fully out of risk of recurrence and who will need follow-up radiotherapy or chemo therapy. The latter in particular is disruptive for patients and may not be used unless necessary. Precision medicine can also identify early risk of cancer by detecting anomalies and gene mutations. 

2. Population health management powered by analytics is everywhere.

Population health management – with data aggregation platforms playing a key role – was a major theme this year at HIMSS as evidenced by the many presentations on successful implementations of such programs. The presentations highlighted health systems that brought data from electronic health record systems, practice management systems and in some cases financial systems to centralized data warehouses and then applied various analytics and visualization tools to garner knowledge. Visualized knowledge was presented to the physicians at the point of care or to the quality improvement teams via dashboards.

One physician group, Crystal Run Healthcare, applied data analytics to identify variability in cost and outcome for their diabetes patient cohort. The group identified best practices across their organization from physicians who achieved better outcomes at a lower cost and then applied that for all. In another instance, North Shore University’s data analytics team leveraged their clinical data warehouse and predictive analytics to predict the risk of patients passing on a contagious and antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus during an outbreak. They cut the number of patients who needed to be tested by half without any increase of bacterial MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) cases.

3. Cybercrime is on the rise as healthcare data becomes rich and precious.

Another growing but scary trend is the increase of cybercrime activities in the healthcare space. According to 10Fold Communication, in 2015 three of the top seven largest breaches of data occurred in the healthcare industry, including more than 80 million patient and non-patient data records breached from Anthem in February last year.

Healthcare data is more precious than credit card data because medical records can’t be reissued. Healthcare data fetches more money on the black market. Unlike the financial industry, healthcare organizations did not face much cybercrime in the past since not much data was digitized. Therefore, they generally do not have the level of maturity and sophistication required when it comes to prevention. Cybercrime against healthcare organizations is a relatively new phenomenon and such organizations have found themselves quite vulnerable. Cybersecurity agencies in United States and Canada recently issued a warning about ransomware attacks against hospitals following a series of such events. As the volume of data grows in healthcare, cybersecurity threats will continue to rise, which will certainly keep data security and privacy officers awake at night.

4. Data interoperability is one of the top priorities for ONC.

Without data interoperability, population health management’s promise can never materialize. Data needs to flow from one system to another to achieve a longitudinal view of patient health. The Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC), therefore, has made this one of its top priorities. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell kicked off HIMSS 2016 with her opening keynote addressing the topic of interoperability. That set the tone for the rest of the conference. Electronic health record vendors are now actively working to make data liquidity happen through various initiatives such as direct messaging, the Sequoia Project and the CommonWell Health Alliance. If the pressure from ONC and buyers continues to rise, we should see major improvements in interoperability during the next three years. More data liquidity will also drive up demands for analytics.

Last year I heard a lot of buzz about population analytics, but there wasn’t a whole lot of substance barring a few trailblazers. Most vendors offering population health management solutions seemed quite immature. Healthcare organizations were trying to get out of the hangover of electronic health record implementation and adoption challenges. This year the picture has changed substantially. Not only did I find engaging conversations on “post-EHR” scenarios, but I also heard stories of successful enterprise data warehouse program implementation by many organizations.

The healthcare industry has shifted its focus toward care coordination and outcome management, which matches up with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s  (IHI) “Triple Aim” initiative. I am not saying that all the potential for improving healthcare with analytics has been fully realized, but I do think the Affordable Care Act and the value-based healthcare delivery paradigm is finally showing the results that policymakers intended when the bill was signed into law by President Obama six years ago.