Data Centric Healthcare Transformations Can Be Enabled by the EarlyBirds Open Innovation Ecosystem

Australian OSINT platform, EarlyBirds is leveraging its ecosystem maps to help healthcare providers modernize their data collection, storage, and analysis pipelines. Readers can find out more about EarlyBirds and its open innovation ecosystem by visiting earlybirds.io.

AiThority Interview Insights: AiThority Interview with Darren Guarnaccia, President at Uniform

Data science can unearth a wealth of information in seemingly routine data that may have remained hidden from even the most determined inquisitors. Most high-tech industries have come to the same conclusion and healthcare is no different. The litany of sensors used in medical settings, the rate at which they output patient vitals, and the innumerable combinations of medications that patients are put on – all create a treasure trove of possible patterns and inferences that are just waiting to be mined for discoveries. However, due to the scale and scope of the data, making any significant headway into extracting useful actionable insights is a mammoth task.

“Aggregating and preparing medical data comes bundled with a lot of non-trivial challenges,” says Kris Poria, cofounder of EarlyBirds, “and that is before you even begin the process of understanding it. Since a patient’s medical records are protected under HIPAA, they have to be stored securely. It is no wonder, then, that hospital and clinic administrators are hesitant to trust their patients’ data to a cloud services provider. Even if you make that leap and settle on a third-party DBaaS (database-as-a-service), you still have to bear that cost. You also have to develop the in-house expertise to begin evaluating that mountain of data. While AI applications have recently begun making their way to consumers in a big way, the people behind them such as statisticians, machine learning experts, and data scientists are some of the most highly paid knowledge workers in the country. So, even if you have all your medical data stored securely and ready to go, the task of taming the beast is still easier said than done.”

The IT infrastructure required for collecting and storing healthcare data needs to be highly available, have built-in redundancy to prevent data loss, comply with modern security standards, and be readily expandable as the volume of data increases over time. Healthcare IT infrastructure thus becomes an ongoing expense that must be justified to stakeholders.

Governments around the world have taken some initiative to prompt universities and large healthcare providers to make better use of the data that is available and is expected to be collected over the coming years. For example, the UK’s NHS AI Lab launched the AI Award and made £140 million available for artificial intelligence innovations that can solve problems in health and social care. In Australia, in August 2021, the government announced that it is investing $79 million in medical research and innovation to develop all kinds of digital technologies that can benefit the populace.

Read More about AiThority Interview: AiThority Interview with Brett Weigl, SVP and GM, Digital, AI and Journey Analytics at Genesys

Jeff Penrose, EarlyBirds’ other cofounder shares his opinion on where future innovations in healthcare IT may come from by saying, “While we have all the individual pieces required to solve the puzzle, the difficult task is putting it all together in a meaningful way that can be emulated across the industry. EarlyBirds does this by bringing together motivated individuals and subject matter experts who have the required technical know-how to the same platform as industry leaders who have the backing of private and public sector funding to make it happen. If you believe that you have solved key problems holding back healthcare IT, please consider signing up for the EarlyBirds platform as an Innovator . We can put your innovations under the spotlight they deserve.”

EarlyBirds is the ideal partner for government and private sector organizations creating or working through data-centric programs to modernize their healthcare systems and processes. EarlyBirds can collaborate with these organizations to build the foundation they will need to move forward with a data-centric approach.

There are both strategic and tactical considerations to be worked out. At a strategic level, this involves mapping the core technologies and solutions that will need to enable these plans. This could include things like AI, ML, and IOT, and segmenting the vast array of data-driven tools and processes that will be needed.

An EarlyBirds Innovation Ecosystem Map is an ideal way to fully understand what technologies are available and, more importantly, what are the trends and potential issues. At a tactical level, EarlyBirds offers its Challenger Program to solve one technical or business challenge at a time in weeks rather than months.

 Latest AiThority Interview Insights : AiThority Interview with Mary-Lou Smulders, Chief Marketing Officer at Dedrone

 [To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]