If easy access to comprehensive data wasn’t a priority for health systems before the pandemic, it is now. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare leaders everywhere turned to data to understand the impacts of the virus and make informed decisions for directing the patient flow and identifying potential and vulnerable patients. A pivotal part of the answer to these daunting challenges was—and is—accurate, precise and up-to-date data. Also,clinicians can now benefit from the capacity to effortlessly search across healthcare systems to receive a complete view of an individual patient’s electronic health records(EHR)  – thanks to data integration in healthcare!

A study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) revealed that only 56% of healthcare organizations can use all their available data and that the rest of the industry is missing out on this massive opportunity. These limitations are costing the industry approximately $342 billion in losses. This is where data integration in healthcare comes into play.

Data integration is the process of connecting various data points from different sources into a unified set. During data integration, the data is first cleansed, communicated with and then transformed to ensure precise analysis. Forbes reports that over 80% of enterprise business operations leaders find data integration critical to ongoing operations. This article gives you a list of reasons to implement data integration in healthcare.

Data Integration in Healthcare: Why It’s Needed

There are various reasons why organizations need to effectively implement data integration in healthcare, such as

  • Lack of a Standard Data Format

The lack of a standardized data format is a major factor for the proper adoption of data integration in healthcare. Healthcare data is fragmented, as it comes in from different sources and in different formats. Top that off with the fact that the healthcare industry is plagued with outdated, expensive, on-premises data warehouses, and you have a formula for massive losses. 

Healthcare institutions can circumvent this hurdle by using a modern data integration platform that enables them to consolidate data into a data lake. An ideal solution that can do just this is the Intone Data Integrator (IDI). IDI will amass all the data within a data lake allowing users to integrate all types of data (of all formats), in mere minutes to speed up insights delivery and decision-making.

  • Misconceptions in Data Exchange

The lack of awareness and information regarding data confidentiality and privacy is something that has been causing problems for healthcare organizations for some time. Data must obviously be protected from illegal access, breaches and tampering, but also shared under specific circumstances. Now balancing between privacy and exchange can be tricky.

A recent study revealed that healthcare was one of the most highly targeted industries for cyberattacks with hospitals accounting for nearly 30% of victims of large data breaches. Intone Data Integrator can help healthcare providers overcome this problem, by ensuring an end-to-end encrypted environment which minimizes the chances of data breaches while allowing only authenticated users to access data. 

  • Lack of Holistic Approach to Manage Data

More often than not, the ones who process data are not the ones who end up using and utilizing it. The transition from one hand to another may cause the loss of essential data. Moreover, data could get misused if it lands in the wrong hands. All the more reason why the IT sector is tasked with predominantly managing database access, an approach that prevents them from focusing on higher-order tasks.

This is another hurdle that can be overcome through the adoption of data integration in healthcare. Intone’s Data Integrator is a self-service integration platform that empowers non-technical users to execute and manage data-driven operations, freeing IT professionals and enabling them to take a role in governance within the workforce.   

There are also so many benefits that come with why Data Integration is needed. For a example, if clinicans can now search across various health systems to get a better picture of a patient’s EHR, then it can make the job easier.  This is because when paramedics must make immediate or quick decisions, this information can be crucial and save lives. At the same time, this information can be communicated with the ER and the patient’s healthcare physician right away. This ensures that the receiving hospital is well-prepared to provide time-sensitive care.

Why Choose Intone Data Integrator (IDI)?

A study by IBM reported that nearly 90% of all data in the world today had been created in the last two years alone. With data being produced at such an alarming rate, there is a great need to ensure that relevant data is being received in a timely manner and without any loss during the transition, an objective that can be achieved through the adoption of data integration in healthcare.

Intones Data Integrator is a state of the art data integration solution that is trusted by industry pioneers and leaders. We offer,

  • 600+ Data and Application connectors
  • Generates knowledge graph for all data integrations done
  • Centralized password management
  • Supports unlimited heterogeneous data source combinations
  • Data encryption at every stage
  • Real-time, streaming & batch processing of data
  • Eye-catching monitoring module that gives real-time updates
  • Distributed In-memory operations.
  • Lineage capturing at every data integration
  • A no-code low-code platform.


Sources:

Know more about rpa in banking and rpa in healthcare.

Image by Yerson Retamal from Pixabay