Data-sharing, not data-siloism, is the key to a sustainable healthcare sector.
That is the main message from a white paper published by Anomaly42, which says that the solution to some of the biggest healthcare problems today, “whether reducing wastage and unnecessary spend, developing more effective treatments or better preventing non-communicable diseases,is to be found in context”. This involves the creation of cloud-based healthcare ecosystems “fed by the anonymised data of a community of stakeholders from every corner of healthcare”.
The analysis says that these stakeholders will include traditional players such as hospitals, pharmacies, GP surgeries and research labs and universities, “both private and public”. Their data will combine with that provided by the growing number of healthcare app and device makers, “powered by millions of ‘quantified selves’ via the rapidly-growing Internet of Things”.
Freddie McMahon, director of strategy and innovation at Anomaly42, said “the answers to many of the biggest healthcare problems we face today aren’t to be found in hard cash but in the data that already surrounds us. But siloed data is worthless”.
He added that the main challenge for traditional healthcare players “is to overcome the psychological barrier of sharing their data. But if they can do this, the prospects of containing the healthcare crisis are far stronger…sharing, as the saying goes, is caring”.
