Our health data: a nugget to be exploited
Today, billions of pieces of healthcare data are generated, stored and analyzed worldwide. This highly coveted resource is opening up infinite opportunities for healthcare players. Start-ups, industries, universities, hospitals and public institutions are increasingly joining forces to maximize the benefits of Big Data in healthcare. Here's a look at how experts are turning healthcare data into value.
The 8th edition of Digital Health Connect, the must-attend event for healthcare and digital players, co-organized by the Ark Foundation and Swiss Digital Health, and supported by Alp ICT, featured a roundtable discussion on May 29, focusing on the value of healthcare data: What is its potential for innovation? What new business models are emerging? What is data-driven medicine?
Hosted by journalist Annick Chevillot (Heidi.news), this virtual round table welcomed four experts from the worlds of research, insurance, public health and technology to discuss:
- Prof Ioannis Xenarios, head of the data analysis platform at the Health 2030 Genome Center,
- Nicolas Loeillot, Director of Innovation at Groupe Mutuel Assurances,
- Patrice Hof, General Secretary of the CARA Association,
- Tony Germini, CEO of Calyps.
Prevention for a better cure
With Big Data, predictive medicine could, in the near future, be able to quantify individual risk and determine optimal, personalized treatment options.
Groupe Mutuel, Switzerland's leading health insurer, is currently laying the groundwork to build models based on the mass of anonymized health data collected from its policyholders. The aim is to predict health paths, in order to anticipate risk for its policyholders, by proposing personalized preventive programs.
The 2030 Health Genome Center, a world-renowned big data center in the field of genomics, is working to decode DNA. To date, the identification of certain genes has already made it possible to determine predisposition to a pathology, such as mutation of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, major risk factors for breast cancer in women. However, many questions remain unanswered. Predictive medicine is still in its infancy.
As Tony Germini, CEO of Calyps, a Valais-based company specializing in artificial intelligence and hospital flow prediction, points out: "A lot of data exists. But you need a certain know-how to find it, process it and then be able to detect a trend: to understand the past and anticipate the future".
Controlling data flow
According to santésuisse, more than 8 billion in additional costs - excluding impacts linked to the COVID-19 pandemic -, due to the increase in the healthcare workforce, salaries and service volumes, will have to be borne by health insurers, public authorities and the patients concerned between now and 2030. According to the Swiss medical journal, Big Data would increase knowledge, while reducing the 20-25% overall waste in the healthcare system.
Today, Switzerland is faced with heterogeneous digitalization among healthcare players and fragmentation of healthcare data. This situation hinders possible collaboration. In contrast, Denmark benefits from a centralized system and has been digitizing its population's health data for many years. Each inhabitant receives a unique identifier from the very first day of life, and every medical procedure is recorded, enabling global monitoring of the population. The downside of this approach is that centralization significantly increases the risk of hacking, i.e. of data being stolen. According to Prof. Ioannis Xenarios, head of the data analysis platform at the Health 2030 Genome Center, the ideal situation would be to manage healthcare data in a decentralized system, while optimizing the coordination of the various players in the sector, thanks to a private-public partnership.
With the arrival of the Electronic Patient Record (EPR), a major digitization of healthcare data is underway, and with it a redefinition of the roles of healthcare players. The major advantage of this tool will be to encourage the sharing of information between the various healthcare players, and to reposition the patient at the center of this data flow. With health data that is "accessible and questionable, patients can develop a new dialogue with their healthcare professionals", notes Patrice Hof, General Secretary of the CARA Association, which is working to implement the EPD, subject to increased information sharing by all players in the ecosystem.
"Supporting the public will be paramount," stresses Tony Germini, CEO of Calyps. " Some patients may feel lost when faced with this mountain of data". All the experts present at the round table agreed that the trust of users - healthcare professionals and patients alike - is the key to success in digitizing data. It's a real team effort that needs to be initiated.
To take the discussion a step further, and on the occasion of Digital Days, the Canton of Valais and the Ark Foundation are organizing a Health Tell on November 3, 2020, in Sion (Valais), entitled "La data dans mon dossier médical" (Data in my medical file), in the presence of three experts in the field. These discussion tables invite you to debate and f
to develop proposals for electronic patient records. More information on the Ark Foundation website.
Replays of the Digital Health Connect conferences, which also focused on the valorization of healthcare data, are available on the Ark Foundation's YouTube channel.
