Introduction

This book shows healthcare professionals how to turn data points into meaningful knowledge upon which they can take effective action. Actionable intelligence can take many forms, from informing health policymakers on effective strategies for the population to providing direct and predictive insights on patients to healthcare providers so they can achieve positive outcomes. It can assist those performing clinical research where relevant statistical methods are applied to both identify the efficacy of treatments and improve clinical trial design. It also benefits healthcare data standards groups through which pertinent data governance policies are implemented to ensure quality data are obtained, measured, and evaluated for the benefit of all involved.

Understanding the Data Structure

Although the obvious constant thread among all of these important healthcare use cases of actionable intelligence is the data at hand, such data in and of itself merely represents one element of the full structure of healthcare data analytics. This book examines the structure for turning data into actionable knowledge and discusses:

• The importance of establishing research questions
• Data collection policies and data governance
• Principle-centered data analytics to transform data into information
• Understanding the "why" of classified causes and effects
• Narratives and visualizations to inform all interested parties

Conclusion

Actionable Intelligence in Healthcare is an important examination of how proper healthcare-related questions should be formulated, how relevant data must be transformed to associated information, and how the processing of information relates to knowledge. It indicates to clinicians and researchers why this relative knowledge is meaningful and how best to apply such newfound understanding for the betterment of all.