The use of big data analytics is increasingly being adopted by healthcare groups in Singapore to reform decision-making in healthcare, from managing department and clinic workloads, to identifying target groups for intervention programmes and treatment,and accurately identifying the root cause of operational issues arising, saving hospitals substantial costs in some instances.
However, experts say analytics is set to make a bigger impact in the near future. Mr Benedict Tan, group chief information officer for SingHealth hopes that analytics will shift from fine-tuning operational efficiency and effectiveness to involve predictive analytics and preventive care.
Associate Professor Teo Yik Ying, Vice Dean of Research at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, says that the School’s biostatistics team is working on projects such as developing methods to mine huge data sets for complex diseases in humans, especially the genetics and genomics of infectious diseases.
Indeed, the growing potential of big data analytics can be observed in bigger projects concerning population health at the regional healthcare clusters. Efforts are currently underway to collect data for population health through health screenings in order to map out the landscape of healthcare demands in the future, understand the profile of patients at hospitals, and also enable governments to gain insights to best develop and deliver healthcare policies.
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- TODAY, 28 February 2015, Saturday