By Marc Edwards B.Sc., PMP, MBA, Content Analytics

If you work in a typical healthcare facility, you most likely have huge amounts of unstructured data to handle. In addition you might have structured data that’s locked in Excel spreadsheet’s access as well. The unstructured data may consist of emails with peaches photographs and videos. All in all, it is a ton of information to deal with. This information is extremely costly to manage and maintain. Poor management of this data can lead to inefficiencies within your organization that can lead to poor treatment of patients. Like all other major organizations, healthcare facilities face a tidal wave of data and are threatened to be drowned within it.

But of course, where there is dilemma, there is opportunity as well. And this opportunity comes in the form of some great buzzwords that I am sure are familiar you. Big data, business intelligence, and analytics have been heralded as the great triple pronged saviour for organizations worldwide in dealing with their data. So of course, companies are jumping on the bandwagon and want to take advantage of this new phenomenon, but where to start? What do you have to do in order to take advantage of analytics and manage your big fat data? Ultimately, a healthcare facility will need to establish a health analytics division or program to take the lead in managing this change. Anyone wanting to establish such a new and novel group should follow the following steps:

1. Get executive buy-in
2. Create an effective team
3. Determine who are the stakeholders and users of data within the organization
4. Identify sources of unstructured data and structured data, who owns the data, and how and where the data stored is.
5. Develop data governance
6. Develop a partnership with your IT division but in sure that the health analytics group is completely separated from IT

I will post I will create separate posts for each of these items later but for now, let me know what you think. Did I leave anything out?