On Friday September 5th 2014, over 130 participants experienced outstanding presentations from national leaders in the Data Analytics field sharing their experience with Big Data in healthcare.

• Dr. Anil Jain, MD, FACP, Senior VP & CMO of Explorys, shared his experience in working with 23 healthcare partners in expeditiously obtaining actionable information from high volume of diverse data sources.  The Explorys tools include: Hadoop, Impala, HIVE. 900 live connections to different sources of data, and homegrown patient matching algorithms. His recommendations:
  
  
  • Leverage your small data first before you get into Big Data
  • Set up a strategic initiative to benefit from Big Data - Big Data without strategy is waste.
  • Set a process for moving from concepts, to establishing metrics,  to questions, to the bench, to the bedside
  • Create a sustainable business model that provides continuous funding for Big Data projects - This requires linking Big Data results to healthcare outcomes.

• Sri Srinvasan, Global Industry Leader Healthcare & Life Sciences, Big Data Analytics, IBM, presented IBM insights and approach to Big Data. Big Data has always been around, we just have not collected or stored it for use.  New technologies are collecting and storing at a faster rate that we can manage (our e-mail boxes are becoming an example of big data). The key is in setting clear objectives and frameworks to determine what data is relevant. For healthcare, customer is the king. Big data can be used across the continuum of care to determine what factors impact the consumer of health services. This enables us to get a 360 degrees view of our healthcare customer. His recommendations:
  
  
  • Start with the Foundation Analytics - gain control of the structured data and convert it into actionable information via dashboards, reports, drill downs.
  • Move the next level, include other data besides healthcare data.  Do like the retail companies do; they look at other factors besides what people are buying.  E.g. people lifestyles, transportation…use of faucets in the home.
  • Acquire or develop skills in Analytics and Cognitive Computing. Instead of asking questions, combine & aggregate data to create awareness and stimulate thinking. Then new thinking and questions will emerge.
  • Recognize that Big Data is not about technology performance. Big Data is about behavior change. This requires getting data on what may be motivators for behavioral change. 

• Dr. Rasu Shrestha, MD, MBA, Chief Innovation Officer, UPMC, Interim President UPMC Technology Development Center, explained that their team is patient centered as they look at big data. They recognize that most healthcare providers get overwhelmed by the amount of information that they are required to enter and read.  Therefore their focus in on simplifying the presentation and use of information. UPMC is looking for ways to integrate, aggregate, summarize and present information in actionable form. This requires processing high volumes of data, at high velocity, with high variety and deliver with high veracity.

Dr. Shrestha proceeded to lead an intense and engaged panel discussion dealing with the realities of big data implementation. The panel participants included:

• Dr. Anil Jain,  MD, FACP, Senior VP & CMO of Explorys
• Sridhar Srinvasan, Global Industry Leader Healthcare & Life Sciences, Big Data Analytics, IBM,
• Tom Johnson, CIO, Penn Highlands Healthcare
• Patrick Mergler, Director of Cancer Informatics, University Hospitals in Cleveland Seidman Cancer Center.
• Daniel Wolfe, Fellow, VA Medical Center, Pittsburgh