An edited version was published on www.healthbridge.co.za in April 2018.
Healthbridge, a leading health-tech solutions company, has been invited to present at the 22nd Annual Enterprise Data World (EDW) Conference, the most comprehensive educational conference on data management in the world.
During the six day event, which is taking place 22 – 27 April 2018 in San Diego, California, USA, Healthbridge’s Intelligence Specialist, JG Cowper will be joining hundreds of data professionals from around the globe to present and share their case studies, experiences, best practices and knowledge pertaining to data management. Everything from data governance and stewardship to data architecture to business intelligence (BI), and more, will be covered.
Healthbridge was invited to the conference because they are a local leader in the transformation of healthcare and have a proven track record of enhancing people’s lives through the democratisation of data. During his presentation on Tuesday, 24th April, Cowper will share South Africa’s unique data management perspective and the challenges and opportunities we face. Specifically, through a case study he will illustrate how an ophthalmology data aggregation and analytics initiative in South Africa is transforming an entire medical society from a point of despair to a position where surgeons feel in control of their industry. He’ll also explain how the resulting data insights have encouraged these surgeons to leverage big data initiatives to better serve their patients.
“Prior to our invitation I challenged the conference organisers to give a voice to data specialists in developing countries so that we can talk about the challenges we face and the solutions we have developed,” said Cowper.
“At Healthbridge, we’ve been involved in a project called 'prescribing data glasses to surgeons', which allows our surgeons to form an opinion and a perspective of their industry and enables them to successfully negotiate on behalf of their businesses as well as on behalf of their patients with insurers and other healthcare professionals. We’ve enabled them to take an active participative role in terms of how those insights are managed for the betterment of their members and their patients,” continued Cowper.
An important focus of the work Cowper does at Healthbridge is empowering stakeholders across the data value chain to recognise profitability opportunities, mitigate commercial risks, and highlight process inefficiencies within their businesses.
“You can have as much data as you like, but you've got to figure out how to build trust so that you can have ever increasing richness of discussions. You might need to work hard initially to make sure you are happy with what you see come out of the data, but if you aren’t happy what are you going to do about it? How are you going to make quality of care better? How are you going to make your discipline better?” said Cowper.
At the heart of Healthbridge is the need to help healthcare practices understand how data insights can be applied to help facilitate efficiency and improved management practices. “The Healthbridge BI team’s role is to make products that allow different bodies to discuss the important issues and to see each other's perspectives. We have a rich data set that is our doctors' data, and we look to package it in such a way that it helps the doctor to run a better practice, see opportunities before they arise, and negotiate a stronger position at the table when it comes to the other stakeholders in healthcare,” concluded Cowper.
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