Data has always held an important position in the organizational structure of the healthcare industry. Organizations have used information to fuel innovation and find new ways to enhance their patient care efforts, but before medical institutions can move forward, they have to develop a solid base of quality care and patient experience initiatives that they can build off of.
When patients check into a hospital or doctor's office, they have a number of unique qualities that ultimately distinguish themselves from every other individual who walks into the front door of that facility. The more the organization knows about the specific patient ahead of time, the better they can treat them. This is similar to the way businesses use data to cater their product development and marketing to each individual.
When data isn't properly managed to help cater services to the individual, the results can lead to poor service and dissatisfied patients and family members. A May 13 article in The Boston Globe features the story of Calvin Hill, a man who went to great lengths to help his father Foster Hill, after he was diagnosed with later-stage prostate cancer. While the younger Hill was doing everything he could to ensure his father's recovery, he admitted it didn't feel as if those tasked with helping him expressed the same level of concern.
Hill explained the frustrating ordeal of trying and failing to receive treatment specifically catered to his father's needs. While he didn't want special service, he felt as if taking each relevant factor into consideration during the treatment process would have gone a long way toward improving the level of care his father received.
"You show up to the hospital, and it's like Groundhog Day," Hill told the Globe, explaining that there were few discernable differences between the way each patient was cared for. "It's this outdated standard of care created for this hypothetical average patient. But no one's an average patient."
However, Hill has the resources to do something about this. His company, GNS Healthcare, processes big data and uses pertinent information about each patient to help generate a specific care plan designed to address certain variables, such as medication allergies and unique symptoms, in conjunction with basic identifiers like age and gender. Couple this concept with the innovative medical practices found throughout Boston and the surrounding area, it's likely that patients will soon enjoy a level of personalized care they never knew.
While this concept has many in the industry very excited, it's important to understand that it all begins with the ability to view and manage information quickly and efficiently. FileMaker development can help organizations build a custom database software system designed to process information and design specific strategies based on that data. By using FileMaker, users can ensure their solutions are created properly, which can alleviate the risk of inaccurate information processing. Nothing would be more damaging than creating a system to organize specific care strategies based off of inaccurate information.
Working with a FileMaker development specialist can help guarantee the quality of a data management solution.