BY DR RASHID KHAN

the world ’ s most valuable resource . The discovery of oil restructured the economies of Middle East countries like the United Arab Emirates ( UAE ).

Once an unknown desert land , the UAE has today become an oasis booming with life and a cosmopolitan destination with a vibrant modern lifestyle . Oil was once considered a power resource that decided a nation ’ s economic growth rate . But that believe has changed in recent years .

“ The world ’ s most valuable resource is no longer oil , but data ,” said Clive Humbly , a British mathematician . Though Clive coined that sentence in 2005 , no one realised the impact of his words until a decade later in 2015 .

The realisation that there is a lot of valuable information loss by ignoring the significance of “ big data ” has only now begun to dawn on many industries and their stakeholders .

In the healthcare industry , patient data is the “ new oil ”. Like oil , data is worthless in its raw form ; it requires refinement , cleaning and structuring to transform it into valuable and meaningful information - data analysis .

Each year , trillions of patient data is produced in the healthcare industry . This number is growing at a rate of 40 per cent per year . That ’ s tons of data .

Unfortunately , 80 per cent of that healthcare data is sitting around in unstructured formats and locked away in medical record storage rooms and clinic shelves . This unstructured data is mostly unused in the provision of care but often holds valuable information on how patients were treated , their past or family medical history and other issues and conditions not related to their most recent visit but will make sense in the future management of them or other patients with similar conditions .

Patient data is not just contained in clinical history or numbers ; it contains useful information which can be collected , shared and analysed in many different ways with various industry players like pharmaceutical companies , medical device innovators , for genetic analysis , etc . It can change the way patients are treated and how healthcare is provided in future .

Usefulness of patient data analysis

The current population lives longer than the previous generation , but the mortality and morbidity rates remain high . This is partly because chronic illnesses like kidney failure , diabetes and hypertension are detected at a late or incurable stage .

And this leads to life-threatening events like sudden cardiac arrest and strokes . Increasing non-communicable diseases or NCDs cause healthcare expenditure to rise and consume a significant portion of the country ’ s annual budget . In 2018 , Malaysia ’ s healthcare spending was RM1,724.65 per capita , a 12.22 per cent increase from 2017 . And this number just keeps increasing every year .

With patient data analysis , doctors can learn as much as they can about patient ’ s health progress and pick up warning signs of serious illness as they arise early in their lives and thus treat a disease at an early stage . This would have a tremendous effect on the patient ’ s life and health expenditure in the long run .

Besides , wearables nowadays can continuously collect a patient ’ s ’ health data ” and send this data to cloud and allow doctors to monitor remotely . For example , if a patient ’ s blood pressure were to increase alarmingly and warrants urgent intervention , the system will send an alert in real-time to the doctor , who will then reach the patient and administer measures to lower the pressure .

Cutting-edge data analytics if used correctly , improves patient care in the healthcare system . Doctors able to detect shortfalls in the patient ’ s management and intervene as early as possible .

Patient data analysis can discover which approaches are most effective in healthcare toward outcomes and promote

In the healthcare industry , patient data is the “ new oil ”. Like oil , data is worthless in its raw form ; it requires refinement , cleaning and structuring to transform it into valuable and meaningful information - data analysis .” evidence-based practice . In the long term , it improves the health of the population served by healthcare institutions .

Patient data analysis in personalised medicine

Patient data analysis has paved the road for personalised treatment for an individual patient . The current medical practice follows a one-size-fits-all approach for almost every illness .

Drugs and other therapy are designed to treat large groups of people with the same types of disease like hypertension , diabetes or cancer . Though some factors like gender , age or allergic history may influence the treatment , overall doctors use the same type of treatment on what ’ s most likely to work for the majority of patients with a similar illness .

The truth is , not everyone responds to treatment in the same way . Some drugs may work very well for certain people but for others , the same drugs may not help at all or cause harmful side effects .

Finding the exact cure that works for each individual involves extensive data analysis across data of various patients . It needs an understanding of the individual patient ’ s co-morbid , genes , lifestyle and the characteristics of the disease to select treatment that is most likely to work for the patient .

Importance of electronic health records

In order to have effective patient data analysis , the adoption of electronic health records ( EHRs ) is crucial . EHRs would bring instant benefit to medical organisations by reducing administrative activities , ensuring data availability , minimising waste , enabling faster time to treatment , reducing costs and improving the quality of care within a health entity .

EHR alone may not be useful if it is not centralised and analysed at a larger scale . The primary purpose behind setting up EHRs is to analyse voluminous , varied , unstructured health data and acquire meaningful insight through data analysis .

Hence , the government project , the Malaysian Health Data Warehouse ( MyHDW ), would be an excellent data analytic centre if it realises its full potential . Launched in 2017 by the Ministry of Health ( MoH ), MyHDW is a national healthcare information gathering and reporting system covering all government and private healthcare facilities and services . MyHDW includes the patient treatment information system ( SMRP ) and the patient registry information system ( PRIS ).

The outcome of MyHDW would be that a patient ’ s medical records are shared among all public health institutions . The patient ’ s journey is simplified from primary to tertiary care , and any doctor treating the patient would have full access to his or her medical records . Secondary data usage of patient records would allow data collected for specific collection activity to be used for non-clinical data analytics and reporting purposes .

Although EHRs have immense potential , the EHR uptake by stakeholders in the healthcare industry is slow , both in the government and private sectors . It is a shame that we cannot utilise the resources to reach its full potential .

It is just like having barrels of raw oil . They remain worthless if not processed into fuel or other products that can be meaningful and useful in our lives . — The Health

Dr Rashid Khan is a Medical Officer at CVSKL