There are few healthcare business intelligence learning networking opportunities
Healthcare business intelligence (BI) and analytics is an emerging (and definitely growing) field. There is no doubt that working in an emerging field like healthcare BI can be exciting. After all, healthcare analytics professionals are breaking new technological ground and are becoming essential players in clinical quality and operational efficiency improvement. It can be frustrating on the leading edge, however, because there are still relatively few experienced BI professionals working in the field (especially in the more clinically-related areas of healthcare), and there are typically no more than a handful healthcare analytics professionals working within a healthcare organization (HCO). These various factors mean that networking, information sharing, and mentoring opportunities can seem to be few and far between.
An opportunity recognized
Laura Madsen, healthcare practice lead at Lancet Software, has worked with healthcare BI professionals at dozens of client sites. Many of these clients have shared their frustrations about the lack of appropriate venues to learn from and share common interests with other healthcare BI professionals. This almost ubiquitous complaint provided the inspiration to create the Healthcare Business Intelligence Summit, a venue exclusively for healthcare business intelligence professionals to connect with, and learn from, one another.
To be sure, there are other BI summits, and even plenty of healthcare information technology conferences available. The gap that Madsen identified, though, was that there was no event specifically for healthcare BI specialists. Indeed, healthcare BI specialists warrant their own networking and learning opportunity because of the unique set of skills that healthcare BI practitioners need to succeed in the field. Not only must healthcare BI professionals know and understand the technology of BI, they must be savvy of the clinical perspective and understand operational and business drivers as well. Any discussion on the topic of healthcare BI must encompass all three of these areas. Prior to the Healthcare Business Intelligence Summit, few (if any) events could fully satisfy the professional development needs of healthcare BI specialists.
Helping to develop healthcare BI best practices
In addition to providing individual professional development opportunities, however, the summit helps to advance the overall maturity level of BI and analytics throughout the healthcare system. Madsen notes that in many instances, Health Care Organizations (HCOs) are not very “mature” when it comes to BI and analytics practices. Analytics and BI are often an “afterthought” to implementation off electronic health records and other healthcare information systems. As a result, the analytics infrastructure of many HCOs consist of spreadmarts or heavily siloed datamarts with limited analytical capability. To address these shortcomings, the Summit brings together healthcare BI thought leaders and practitioners to discuss strategies, tools, and techniques to help advance healthcare BI best practices (including governance, data stewardship, and architecture standards).
See my presentation at the Healthcare BI Summit
As I previously announced, I am honored to be a presenter at this year’s summit, which is being held on October 12, 2011, in Minneapolis. My presentation topic is going to be “Healthcare analytics from the waiting room to the treatment room – decision support in action“, where I’ll discuss how the creative use of analytics will help enable the transparency and cross-silo information sharing that HCOs need to break down the barriers in the way of true healthcare transformation.
If you are looking for an opportunity to connect with other healthcare business intelligence and analytics professionals and help bring BI best practices to your organization, the Healthcare BI Summit is perhaps the best opportunity to connect with others in your field and to help advance the overall practice of healthcare BI.
For more information, be sure to check out the Healthcare Business Intelligence Summit website. As an added benefit, the Summit is offered at no cost to qualified healthcare professionals.
I’m hoping to see you in Minneapolis this October!
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