Harnessing Healthcare Data to Create Actionable Information

SAN DIEGO—Data is becoming an important asset to health care providers, including real estate owners. This trend is part of a larger movement within the healthcare space in which demographic, economic and technological changes are reshaping everything, from its delivery to its funding models, from education to scientific innovation and from the role of the physician to the role of pharmaceutical companies, payors and patients, according to an inaugural healthcare trends report from Stanford Medicine.

Like the rest of the world, the report said that health care is becoming increasingly connected but also increasingly complex, which poses both an opportunity and a challenge. “Whether it is health wearables or on-demand testing, better hospital software or algorithms capable of catching disease more effectively, rapid change is taking place,” Stanford University School of Medicine dean Lloyd Minor says.

The reason for this, he said, is the increased access to big data and advanced data analytics. “If this continues – and we firmly believe it will – doctors will need to learn new skill sets that, in turn, will require changes to education and learning.”