Predictive Analytics – Healthcare’s Crystal Ball

...Imagine if you could effectively predict who was going to be hospitalized and reallocate resources to prevent unnecessary hospitalization and put those resources to use for cure rather than care.  Predictive analytics can help with this and provide healthcare organizations with numerous benefits4:   

• Optimizing Resource Utilization-Predictive analytics helps healthcare organizations to better allocate nurses, clinicians, diagnostic machinery, and other resources. Patterns and trends in admissions, bed utilization, length of stay, and other metrics can be analyzed and used to predict future volumes, particularly when peaks may occur.  Hospitals can be more prepared and ensure there are enough resources on hand to provide superior care.
• Enhancing Patient Care-Predictive analytics lets healthcare facilities take a more proactive approach to treatment. For example, by more precisely predicting which patients will develop chronic conditions, or which ones will respond best to certain types of medications or therapies, they can focus not only on treating existing conditions, but also on preventing recurrences.
• Improving Clinical Outcomes-Predictive analytics can improve the outcome of patient treatments.  By closely analyzing which treatments work best providers can make more intelligent decisions about treatment plans, minimizing complications and patient readmissions...