Data-Driven Healthcare: How Analytics and BI are Transforming the Industry

APPENDIX B Tenets of Healthcare BI

The Five Tenets

1. Data quality: It could be said that data quality is important to any industry, but it is absolutely critical to healthcare business intelligence (BI)—no one dies if a retail report misrepresents inventory in an end cap—so it lands in our number-one spot as the first tenet of healthcare BI. Perhaps more than any other tenet, quality data helps drive trust and user adoption of the program. Data quality is relative, and having high-quality data doesn't mean that your data is 100 percent accurate, because, after all, what is accurate? There are many aspects of data quality, including the concepts of data governance, data profiling, and data certification.
2. Leadership and sponsorship: Some of the most successful healthcare BI programs started because one person was absolutely passionate about the difference data can make to an organization. Long-term sponsorship requires full engagement and a knowledgeable staff. It means that the organization isn't just giving some time to it but is dedicating, fueling, and insisting that data becomes the lifeblood of the organization. It is a leadership activity, but doesn't always require a person in a traditional leadership role in your organization. We review the different levels of sponsorship and what it takes to support your sponsor for the long term.
3. Technology and architecture: To be clear, BI is not an information technology (IT) activity. But investing in the best practices associated ...