Healthcare providers and researchers can use social analytics to learn about the opinion of customers about their brand, service and the team of doctors, says Partha Dey, Healthcare Leader, IBM India/SA to Elets News Network (ENN)

What types of healthcarespecific solutions are offered by IBM Analytics to assist medical facilities in taking key transformative business decisions? Do you see a trend of increased adoption of such novel technological methodologies in India for making strategic decisions?

Across the globe, especially in India, majority of the healthcare data is unstructured and disparate, with most useful information recorded in papers or available in the form of prescriptions, unrecorded documents and so on. IBMs analytics capabilities address the challenge of inability to reference and action on such unstructured data. IBMs cognitive solutions can create actionable insights from both structured and unstructured data and help take better decisions for better care management. IBMs Watson for Oncology is one such step towards assisting the care providers to suggest the best course of treatment. By applying IBM Watsons cognitive technologies to the vast amount of data, medical practitioners can uncover patterns, opportunities and actionable hypotheses that would be virtually impossible to discover using traditional research or programmable systems alone.

These advanced and cognitive solutions have been adopted at the same rate as in the western world, which shows India’s openness to new technology in healthcare, as we have seen in telecom.

As every industry has its own challenges when it comes to developing business solutions, what kind of socioeconomic and political parameters play crucial role in the Indian healthcare sector? What all kind of expertise and steps are involved in identifying trends and gaps?

IBMs suite of solutions for public health, such as Panorama, provide public health professionals a powerful and comprehensive set of tools for managing the day-to-day activities of public health, and for less frequent but devastating occurrences, such as outbreaks or pandemics.

Additionally, IBMs Predictive Analytics capabilities help predict probability and intensity of disease outbreak in cities and provinces. This new IBM solution is primarily designed for the use of provinces, states or country, as well as assists in the prevention, identification, treatment and management of communicable diseases and major outbreaks. Its evolution has also resulted in pragmatic first-of-a-kind solutions to complex public policy and public health challenges, including medical terminology management,user defined assessment tools, and complex privacy and consent management.

How is IBM using Social Analytics in healthcare?

With social platforms becoming the new medium of expression, information and communication in today’s world, social data cannot be ignored. IBMs Social Analytics practice brings some very useful and specific tools for healthcare players. IBMs landmark partnership with Twitter gives us an unprecedented access to social data, which when coupled with other exogenous data, such as weather, events, etc., brings forward useful trends, predictions and actionable insights. Healthcare providers and researchers can use social analytics to learn about the opinion of customers about their brand, service and the team of doctors; customer treatment preferences; opinions and experiences with various drugs; predicting disease outbreak in specific geographical regions, etc.

With so much focus on ensuring privacy of data, how far has IBM Analytics succeeded in aggregating trusted data available in the Indian market, particularly with the current status of market being still undefined to a large extent?

IBM is completely cognizant of customers privacy rights and at every step we respect and take care of patients private data. Analytics are run on de-identified data provided by healthcare providers. All IBM tools are secure and trusted by every partner to get the best insights with any quantum of structured or unstructured data.

Since collaboration is one the key principles of IBM Analytics, what all types and levels of collaborations IBM Analytics has in the Indian healthcare sector? Do you also collaborate with medical institutions across India? If yes, please provide the details.

IBM has built a strong partner ecosystem across all functions and industries, with healthcare being one of them. We have various partnerships with leading institutes and hospitals across the world. Their industry expertise and our technological prowess bring together such tools and solutions that help us understand the events, customers and treatments, like never before.

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