Data, analytics and AI-enabled healthcare: Four key takeaways from the IS22 keynote

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The 2022 Impact Summit (IS22) was outstanding for a plethora of reasons—and Dr. Lyle Berkowitz is foremost among them. For this year’s keynote, Lyle Berkowitz, MD, FACHP, FHIMSS, a biomedical engineer turned primary care physician, healthcare innovator, futurist and digital health expert, shared how to execute on the powerful potential of data analytics and AI to advance the ‘renaissance in healthcare’ that is happening as we speak. Read on for 4 key takeaways from the talk. 

1: We overestimated the effect analytics and AI would have on healthcare in the short term—yet underestimated their long-term impact on the entire industry.

This general sentiment has been applied across many industries for many innovations. It serves to remind us that though situations did not change overnight, the landscape is progressively shifting. We saw this happen with telehealth capabilities, and we will continue to see it as analytics and AI slowly transform care delivery. The question is merely, when will you adopt these technologies and how extensively will you use them?  

2: The change we’re searching for may already be at our fingertips.

New is not always the answer—sometimes we need to adapt and advance with the powerful resources available to us. Organizations must ask, how can we take better advantage of the technology we already have? What analytics features are we not tapping into? How can we enhance the user experience in the platforms we have? Where can we become more efficient and augment employee productivity by automating repetitive and mundane tasks and processes?

3: Sometimes you have to reframe the problem.

The industry is facing many challenges and is saddled with legacy solutions inhibiting efficiency. To really have an impact on an issue, you may have to think of it from a new angle. Go on an ‘Innovation Safari’ to other industries and business models to find out how they have avoided or handled similar obstacles. 

In the case of clinician shortages, consider how law and consulting firms simultaneously leverage people of varying levels of expertise and specializations—as well as thoughtfully-chosen technology—to efficiently and comprehensively handle a case or client. How could we replicate this to relieve physician burden and burnout through intelligent automation and digital transformation of diagnostic and clinical processes, protocols and tasks? 

4: Think big AND think small.

Analytics and AI are playing a significant role in transforming care delivery. Fortunately, this is happening on both the broad, population level and the precise, patient level. With the right data inputs and powerful analytics solutions, organizations can:

• Comprehensively address risk and gaps throughout communities
• Assign patients appropriately into the health population pyramid – automated care and telehealth enabled treatment for the 50% without serious conditions and office-based care complemented by digital tools, telehealth, analytics and AI for those with chronic and acute conditions.
• Track demand patterns—using forecasting algorithms to staff clinicians and stock supplies most appropriately 
• Visualize data in clear, compelling formats to empower executives, physicians and nurses with actionable insights needed at the point-of-care
• Make personalized decisions enabled by a patient’s genomic data and insights whenever feasible

Dr. Berkowitz’s closing thought encouraged healthcare leaders to “First, understand your problem and look at it from new angles. Then get out there and start taking advantage of the technologies available to fix it.”