Can a complex and intricate system like healthcare learn anything from sectors such as automotive or industry in general? What could a hospital possibly have in common with a car manufacturing plant or a shopping center?
At first glance, this question might seem odd or even disrespectful, but the reality is quite different. Industry has long adopted and increasingly refined systems aimed at better utilization of products and inventory, improved financial management, identifying bottlenecks, and optimal management of company assets to enhance productivity. So, what could be the point of intersection between parallel lines like profit and care?
The former may lead to indiscriminate cuts in resources to control costs, while the latter aims to increase investments to effectively address health emergencies, an aging population, new care needs, and the rise in chronic conditions.
In healthcare, the topic is closely tied to medical excellence. Consider an hospital with skilled, capable, and responsive nurses and doctors—could they truly be valued if the facility where they work is not adequately structured? Inefficiencies that may lead to unjustified cost increases or even failure in industry result in alienating working conditions for staff, wasting resources and time in healthcare, where time often determines the possibility of patient recovery. The answer lies in having analytical data that enable AUTOMATED, STRUCTURED, AND EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE OF HEALTHCARE PROCESSES through digitalization.
Technology not only facilitates everyday life but also the management and organization of any type of business, INCLUDING healthcare facilities. Business Intelligence (BI) in healthcare is crucial for managing and organizing medical staff, patients, public investments, and costs that must be kept within the annual budget.
Creating a corporate culture that views BI tools as the exclusive source of accurate and continually updated data must be integrated at all levels of governance within healthcare facilities. Managing workflows, digitalization, and analyzing emergency situations through dashboards allow healthcare managers to meet the needs of the facility and doctors to monitor real-time department conditions. The time saved is a valuable asset because process automation enables clinical professionals to focus more effectively on the most crucial “business” activity: patient care.
Ensuring a system where a business intelligence ecosystem allows for the analysis of all data collected from management platforms, including advanced features like indoor navigation and asset and patient transport tracking, certainly helps identify issues and optimization opportunities but, above all, enables healthcare personnel to perform their jobs better, concentrating on what is truly important and sometimes literally life-saving, such as in the operating room.
We could analyze this model from two perspectives: one with a cold utilitarian approach, and the other with specific attention to the best and most accurate patient care. In both cases, we will see that the two lines intersect: with the use of BI, budgets will increase due to savings from improved efficiency, and from a medical and healthcare perspective, staff will have more time to carry out delicate functions, whether in assistance or clinical roles. In this sense, we can certainly say that in healthcare, Business Intelligence brings together two parallel lines. A contradiction in terms? No, just technology serving healthcare facilities!
