Understanding Enterprise Data Warehouse in Healthcare: Benefits and Best Practices

Healthcare is one of the industries that stands to benefit most from the massive increase in data output, and therefore the technologies that can turn this data into meaningful insights. Conversely, healthcare organizations that are not able to leverage data effectively will be left behind. 

Leading companies in this space are leaning on the healthcare enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to extract the maximum value from the data they generate, and position themselves for long-term success. 

We’ll explore the EDW in healthcare from a number of perspectives, including practical advice, tips, and common pitfalls to avoid. 

What is Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) in Healthcare?

An enterprise data warehouse in healthcare is a central repository for structured healthcare data ranging from medical records to patient and financial data. It provides data access to stakeholders and enables them to actually use the data effectively – from running queries, to uncovering valuable insights, or populating critical dashboards. 

An EDW in healthcare is essential for the organization to run efficiently. It’s crucial from both the compliance and financial perspectives, and of course from an operational point of view – especially when it comes to patient care. 

The Benefits of EDW for Healthcare Organizations

There are many benefits of an EDW for healthcare organizations. We could go even further, and say that a healthcare organization without an enterprise data warehouse in place would struggle to deliver on its mandate. Some of the key benefits include:

Better outcomes for patients: An EDW in healthcare ensures that data is never siloed, and that all relevant data is accessible to make the best medical and operational decisions possible. Healthcare providers can access patient records to recommend the ideal treatment plans, predict outcomes, and identify risks. 

Better outcomes for the organization: Implementing an effective EDW enables management to understand costs, revenue sources, trends, and insights. It also allows them to streamline processes and consolidate resources. The EDW makes it easier to analyze billing data, discover inefficiencies, and implement multi-year data-backed procurement plans. 

Better outcomes for society: By being able to effectively query enormous data volumes, medical research gets a massive boost – from drug research to large-scale clinical trials.

Scalability: With massive amounts of data pouring in from sensors, medical devices, healthcare practitioners, and other electronic healthcare records (EHR), an EDW for healthcare organizations ensures that the infrastructure handling this data is never overwhelmed. Additionally, an EDW ensures there’s one powerful source of truth for analytics purposes.

Security and Compliance: Healthcare organizations have to comply with stringent regulations, including but not limited to HIPAA. An EDW is central to maintaining the standards of security and compliance necessary to meet these demands through advanced data security and transparent audit trails. 

Key Features of a Healthcare EDW System

There are several key features of an EDW in a healthcare setting:

• Centralization: All data is funneled into one data warehouse, providing a single source of truth, and unlocking insights that might otherwise be invisible. 
• Integration: Data is loaded from multiple sources, but is stored in a format that is consistent and queryable.
• Structure: Data is organized into schemas to optimize accessibility.
• Quality: Generally data is validated to ensure accuracy.
• Analysis: Data can be used for analysis, complex queries, visualization or predictive modeling. 

Steps for Implementing EDW in Healthcare

Here’s how to get started with implementing an EDW in your healthcare environment:

1. Define your objectives: What are the primary reasons you’re setting up your healthcare EDW? These objectives will inform the type of setup you ultimately deploy.
2. Choose your architecture: Will you be going with a centralized, federated, or hub-and-spoke design? A star or snowflake schema? Will you be deploying on-prem, in the cloud, or a hybrid approach? 
3. Decide on your tools: The technology you select now will have a massive impact in future; there are several popular options available, so make sure you do your research before choosing your platform. 
4. Plan your integration: Set out all your data sources, as well as the ETL pipeline to direct these into your EDW – ensuring quality and validation throughout. 
5. Test and deploy: Roll out the healthcare EDW and monitor continuously for any issues. 
6. Optimize: Continuously check for new data sources, errors, or drops in performance. 

How EDW Enhances Patient Care and Data Analytics

When implemented correctly and used to its full potential, an EDW in healthcare can completely transform patient care and analytics. 

For one thing, with data now centralized, the system is able to present the full picture. Without siloes, the company can now analyze all data, not a sample, surfacing insights that ordinarily wouldn’t be available. For a patient, this means that every doctor can have access to instant insights from imaging tools, a patient’s entire medical history, lab systems, and the list goes on. This enables a whole new level of personalized care with the highest chance of successful outcomes. 

There’s a huge predictive element here too. With access to so much historical data, healthcare professionals can predict and prevent negative outcomes. For example, with historical data on patients with similar symptoms and backgrounds, doctors can more efficiently plan a treatment program and avoid complications. 

From a planning perspective, an EDW in healthcare allows administrators to better plan resource allocation, prevent readmissions, and ensure the efficient running of the institution. 

FAQ

Q: How secure is EDW in handling patient data?

A: Generally, an EDW is considered highly secure when it comes to handling patient data. Most EDWs will have encryption, access controls, and other HIPAA requirements built in. 

Q: Can small healthcare providers benefit from EDW?

A: Providers of all sizes can benefit from an EDW in healthcare. For example, cloud-based providers offer a mix of performance, scalability, and low setup costs that suit almost any budget while providing enhanced outcomes for patients and the organization as a whole. 

Q: What challenges do healthcare providers face with EDW?

A: There are several challenges relating to healthcare-specific EDWs. These include having the processing power to run complex queries on large datasets, costs, scalability, and integrating diverse data sources. 

Meet SQream: Industry-leading GPU accelerated data processing

Healthcare organizations are increasingly turning to SQream for their EDW needs. SQream is the advanced analytics platform that harnesses the power of data via GPU acceleration. 

SQream is critical to healthcare organizations’ EDW deployment for several reasons:

• Handle massive data volumes: Healthcare companies regularly generate terabytes and petabytes of data, and SQream’s GPU-accelerated solution enables healthcare organizations to handle growing EDW requirements with ease. 
• Reduce time to insight: With advanced data ingestion and ELT capabilities, stakeholders can access insights in a fraction of the time this traditionally took. 
• Run complex queries: With compute resources often pushed to the limit, SQream’s powerful GPU-accelerated solution crunches complex queries and returns high-impact, value-driving insights.
• Slash costs: At up to one fifth of the total cost of ownership of other solutions, SQream offers ROI right off the bat. 
• Improve outcomes: All of these capabilities allow SQream to demonstrably improve outcomes for both patients and healthcare organizations through accelerated medical insights – for example, instead of taking several years and billions of dollars, both the cost and timeframe of research into new drugs can be shortened dramatically. 

To learn more about how your organization can benefit from a SQream-powered Enterprise Data Warehouse, get in touch with the SQream team here. 

Summary: EDW in Healthcare

An enterprise data warehouse in healthcare is best practice for running a successful organization. 

The benefits are compelling, and it’s the surest way to transform the huge amount of data you have access to into really successful patient – and business – outcomes.