International Institute for Analytics

US colleges and universities must recognize their critical role in the local business ecosystem by not only understanding but anticipating the future needs and workforce skills that will be in-demand by the local business community. Business Analytics is acquiring an increasingly significant and strategic role in business, particularly in the healthcare field. Effective and accessible educational programs must subsequently be developed to teach and train the next generation of knowledge workers to be proficient in business analytics. Now is the time to evolve in order to develop an accurate and cross disciplinary analytics skillset profile for the healthcare industry.

Intermountain Healthcare is an integrated health system, dedicated to advancing the power of analytics for clinical care. As a new era of analytics emerges, Intermountain plans to advance its mission to provide the best quality care at the lowest appropriate cost by continuing to advance and leverage analytics for better business and clinical decisions.

This research brief is the first part of a two-part series addressing the use of analytics for the management of Corporate Real Estate. While the analytics efforts discussed in this brief are aimed at managing corporate real estate assets, many of the ideas and learnings are relevant for a broader audience and applicable across many areas of corporate operations. Corporate real estate, defined as the real property used by a business organization for its own operational purposes, includes headquarters, branch offices, manufacturing facilities, storage locations, data centers, retail sites executive suites and even employee home offices.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the shortage of quantitative analysts and data scientists in this world, and many people wonder where they will all come from. Today I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that there are a rapidly growing number of educational institutions that are offering courses, concentrations, and degree programs in analytics and big data.

How will employers and other payers provide healthcare coverage for their employees in the next 5 years? How will consumers respond? What will be the impact on prescription drug use?

With all of the lawsuits working through the courts and all of the scary possibilities being discussed in the media, it has led some people to assume that big data is inherently evil. Once you believe that big data is evil, a natural response is to try and shut down the collection and analysis of big data to the maximum extent possible. While big data certainly has risks, it would be a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater if the use of big data is shut down.

What should be considered when establishing relationships between analytics teams and IT resources and partners?

The press and blogosphere are full of references to “The Internet of Things” (TIoT) or even “The Internet of Everything.” It’s great to connect inanimate objects to the Internet, of course. But that’s only a first step in terms of doing something useful with all those connected devices. “The Analytics of Things” are just as important, if not more so.

Written by Andrew Fast, Ph.D. and John F. Elder, IV, Ph.D.

Many estimates claim that over 80% of the world’s data is stored as unstructured text. Whatever the exact proportion, there is no denying that a significant amount of valuable information is stored within free-text documents such as reports, memorandums, and correspondence. Text is also stored as “notes” or “free-text” fields within an otherwise structured database. While some of the results presented in a report may also be available as structured data, the most important insights – such as expert opinions or final conclusions - are almost always only available as free text. This also holds for call center notes, electronic medical records, and claims notes.

Many organizations are focused on driving analytics as a foundation for competitive advantage. Often overlooked in this discussion is the importance of establishing a foundation for analytics through the process of data readiness and data cleansing.