U.K. based health outcomes advisory and technology company, Outcomes Based Healthcare, working in collaboration with pan-industry big data service provider Big Data Partnership, has secured a match-funded grant from the U.K.’s innovation agency Innovate UK, (formerly the Technology Strategy Board) for a £1million project to design a more personalized, data-driven model to improve health outcomes for people with diabetes.
Initially, big data and advanced analytics have been employed in the healthcare field to predict therapy and care cost, or to calculate likelihood of hospital readmission. This project takes the technology a step further; creating a model providing deep insights into progression of the disease, enabling both doctors and patients to make better-informed decisions about their approach to treatment. The process will use massive volumes of data to more accurately predict outcomes and allow detection and pre-treatment of complications that could severely affect or even endanger the lives of diabetes sufferers, such as heart attacks, stroke, eye disorders, kidney issues and limb amputations.
“Healthcare systems are cracking under the pressure of ever-growing global health budgets, partly because we’re treating people with drugs and interventions, without being sure exactly who will benefit from any given treatment,” says former GP and at Outcomes Based Healthcare CEO and founder Dr. Rupert Dunbar-Rees, “Applying data science and outcomes insight to healthcare systems can fundamentally disrupt current disease management, allowing greater precision in care delivery, and ‘pre-treatment’ rather than simply prevention.”
This project is claimed to be the first of its kind, linking huge quantities of health data non-health data for machine learning analysis. The software that emerges will support decision-making by healthcare providers concerning the who, when, and how of diabetes complications pre-treatment, by applying an approach intended to reduce costs while improving overall outcomes for patients. Doctors using the technology will be empowered by discovery of patterns and correlations in the data predictive of diabetes complications far in advance of observable symptoms manifestation.
“Huge amounts of real data hold the secrets to many business and social challenges,” says Big Data Partnership CEO and cofounder Mike Merritt-Holmes. “We are thrilled to be able to apply the latest industry thinking and technology to big data from lifestyles, medication, environment and diet to discover a truly innovative way to approach healthcare.”
The prototype diabetes analysis software will be developed and tested by experts, regulator, hospitals and General Practitioners by Q2 2016. Once research and development of the diabetes software is finalized, the research team will apply a similar approach to addressing other diseases and their patient communities.
Sources:
Outcomes Based Healthcare (OBH)
Big Data Partnership
For more information, visit:
http://www.outcomesbasedhealthcare.com
http://www.bigdatapartnership.com
