Data generation has increased tremendously in recent years. The data generated needs to be stored, processed, and analyzed for future use. This is the main purpose of data collection. Data collection requires researching s specific area or topic that needs to be analyzed for making informed decisions. More improved results can be obtained with the help of accurate and updated data, irrespective of whether it has to be used for governmental, personal, or public matters. Data collection has immense benefits in the healthcare sector.
- Institute of Medicine (IOM) study “To Err Is Human” published in 1999.
- As many as 98,000 deaths annually due to preventable medical errors.
To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health care–it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer.
Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.
Analyzing medical death rate data over an eight-year period, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S. Their figure, published May 3 in The BMJ, surpasses the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) third leading cause of death — respiratory disease, which kills close to 150,000 people per year.
The use of health information technology (health IT), including electronic health records (EHRs), is expected to improve efficiency of health care delivery, decrease overall costs for services, and improve the quality of patient care
Winston Hide, an associate professor of bioinformatics at Harvard’s School of Public Health, told Grant, “In the last five years, more scientific data has been generated than in the entire history of mankind. You can imagine what’s going to happen in the next five.”
- Health care data is one of the fastest-growing segments at 48 percent per year
- Growth due to increased data sources resulting from technologic advances
- Healthcare Data will be around 3000 exabytes by 2022. Each exabyte is equal to one billion gigabytes.
- Why data collection in healthcare is crucial
- Proper management and collection of information is an important key for patient treatment and management. A dynamic industry in our society is known to be the healthcare sector that uses the latest instruments and technologies for analyzing and tracking important information related to the medical system, patients, and hospitals. Using the right data collection tools, you can easily get a complete and clear picture of your patient’s health, manage health records, and share it with other healthcare professionals. Following are the main advantages of data collection in the healthcare sector.
Reduces cost significantly
Data collection and data analysis help save a huge cost for the healthcare sector. It results in low cost and better results from comprehensive and detailed medical treatment and diagnosis. It helps to collect and store complex and critical information in one location, which lowers the repeated number of physician visits and avoids unnecessary prescription requirements.
There is great demand for health information management professionals.
