Putting the Precision into Precision Medicine

I was invited to speak at Oxford Global’s inaugural Precision Medicine Congress, April 25 and 26 in London, England. My topic, “Big Data Analytics for Precision Medicine”, stood out from the other presentations, as intended, since I was one of few non-clinicians or genomics scientists invited to speak at the Congress but believe that as I professor and data scientist I was able to hold my own. As an added bonus, I had to pleasure to meet a ‘Sir’ and a ‘Dame’, which are knighthood titles bestowed on extraordinary subjects, in recognition of their great achievement or outstanding service to the United Kingdom. Both worked in the healthcare industry either in the public or private sectors.

The Secret Top Executives Know About Healthcare Analytics

Executive Summary

When most people think about the challenges of implementing healthcare analytics, they wrongly expect it to be the data, talent or technology.  Executives that have been successful implementing healthcare analytics know the top challenge is leadership.  In a study performed recently, leadership was identified as the top challenge by participants.  In fact, it wasn’t even close. Leadership was identified as a challenge by 29% of the respondents versus 18% for data and 14% for talent.  Statistically, this is a huge difference.

Ready to Become a Population Health Analytics Competitor?

The healthcare industry generally recognizes the need for population health management. It has the potential to save lives, improve health and save money. A key component of population health management is analytics. But, as widely accepted as the need for population health management is the fact that most don’t know where to start. A survey of healthcare executives by Stoltenberg Consulting revealed that 41% of respondents identified data analytics and business intelligence as a priority for the year 2015. The problem is that 84% of them have questions about where to start their implementation efforts.