4 healthcare data challenges and their impacts 

According to the World Health Forum, hospitals produce 50 petabytes of data—comprised of clinical notes, lab tests, medical images, sensor readings, and more—every year. At the same time, 97% of this information goes unused, leading to lost opportunities for many healthcare organizations. 

With this explosion of information every second, how can you ensure that your hospital operations are not affected by big data challenges? The first step is identifying the unique pain points that affect your employees and patients.  

Interoperability and Integration 

Mergers and acquisitions have become the norm in the healthcare sector, creating a stronger foundation for better medical services.  

At the same time, this information comes from different source systems in different locations, creating more complex needs and increasing the pressure on IT teams to deliver scalable solutions for their data management challenges. 

Without the help of integration and/or interoperability, hospitals are often faced with significant administrative costs and decreased employee productivity for delivering quality care.  

Communication Overload 

Many healthcare organizations deal with communication overload as part of their challenges in data management. As their data sets grow, so does their margin of error. These inaccuracies can lead to failed communication attempts between users and other users, departments, or on-call groups. 

This noticeable impact to workflow often contributes to delayed patient care and burnout among clinicians.  

Data Fragmentation 

One of the most common challenges in data management is fragmentation, which occurs when a hospital’s information is stored in many disparate source systems. Data then becomes compartmentalized, inaccessible, and inaccurate in other locations.  

For example, your hospital’s HR database might store mobile numbers for clinicians on site. If this information has not been provided to your contact center software, your operators might not be able to access it, leading to potential delays in patient care and dissatisfaction. 

Data Standardization  

Hospitals often see challenges with big data due to a lack of standardization. If their information is not standardized at your healthcare facility, it is not predictable. If it’s not predictable, it can’t be trusted by users to be used on a consistent basis.   

Standardization also plays a key role throughout a healthcare facility. In one example, standardization can help your employees locate specific data related to on-call group directories that are structured by department, specialty, and sub-specialty.   

Creating a robust strategy that effectively manages important information is essential for overcoming challenges with big data—and ultimately—your hospital’s future success.