Data Data Every Where, But Not A Bit Makes Sense

Details of Author:
Name:  Dr. Gunjan Sharma; Age: 29 years; Qualification:  B.D.S (RGUHS) , PGDHM (ASCI)

Experience: 3 years; Presently working at: Fernandez Hospital, Hyderabad; Department: Quality

Designation: Quality Coordinator; Areas of Interest:    Quality aspects in Indian healthcare industry,       Training needs of Indian healthcare workforce,  Auditing,  Data Management 

In today's healthcare industry everyone is talking about high end information systems and technology solutions like HIS, EMR etc. but the ground reality is far more different than these jargons.

Budding generation of Managers and mandatory rules or standards laid down by various governmental and non governmental bodies in India have sparked the process of data collection in hospitals. Lot of data is available in raw and manual form but most of it is of no use as it cannot be processed for obtaining any inferences.
Major concerns in this area are:

Manual Data

In this computer driven era still lot of data is entered manually. Huge piles of manual data are difficult to handle as it first needs to be digitized. Moreover problems like overwriting, corrections and incomplete data sets are spoiling the quality of collected data.

Lack of Staff

I fail to understand the repulsive attitude of Indian hospitals towards the data entry personnel. It might be due to their cost cutting strategies that they find them to be of no use. Hospitals are more keen in utilizing their existing staff in entering data for their concerned department. I think it’s time for them to realize that data entry is an art and the entire life cycle of data depends on its inception. Bad quality data is the horror of any data research scientist.

Transcription Errors

Even if some of the hospitals recruit data entry operators many transcription errors occur while digitizing the data. One of the major reasons for this can be; untrained data entry operators. Majority of data entry operators are recruited from other industries as there is a lack of staff which is specialized in hospital data and understands healthcare terminologies.

Poor HIS

Most of the hospitals are either buying or developing their own HIS. But there is lack of planning in customizing or developing HIS products as the end users are ignorant about their present and future needs. Lack of training and sensitization of hospital staff towards the statistics driven processes has led to this condition. Hence hospitals end up with HIS which is incomplete and is not able to satisfy the requirements of the departments.

Lack of Analysts

Huge sets of data needs the magic touch of an analyst to transform into sense making graphs and trends. Hospital management courses need to focus more stringently in the area of data analysis by introducing subjects like Business Intelligence. But it’s not just the educational institutes, hospitals also need to motivate and provide opportunity to young managers into the less explored Indian woods of healthcare data.

I hope that this miniscule effort of mine will encourage all upcoming managers and administrators in the area of healthcare data management and analysis.