Healthcare Solutions
A dose of insight for healthcare
Smarter Care uncovers valuable insights into lifestyle choices, social determinants and clinical factors, enabling holistic and individualized care to optimize outcomes and lower costs.
Watson in healthcare
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Medical information doubles every five years. Watson can help healthcare organizations analyze data to improve patient outcomes and make processes more efficient.
According to the World Health Organization, as many as one in ten patients in developed countries is actually harmed while receiving hospital care. The organization also finds that additional hospitalization, litigation costs, infections acquired in hospitals, lost income, disability and medical expenses have cost some countries between US$ 6 billion and US$ 29 billion a year.
Causes of these ailments include inefficiency and misaligned incentives. Money does not buy quality. There is too little patient involvement in our disease-centered world.
While healthcare organizations are amassing vast amounts of data, multiple versions of the truth producing errors in hospital, patient care and payment processes. Physicians have been on information overload for decades, contributing to the estimated 15% of diagnoses that are inaccurate or incomplete (Harvard Business Review, April, 2010). We don't understand why medicine works for one patient but not another. And growing shortages of nurses and medical specialists put more strain on broken systems.
But rather than focus on what is wrong with healthcare, let's imagine how information insights—coupled with clinical collaboration—can dramatically improve quality of care, patient safety and outcomes, while also improving the cost-effectiveness of care.
The smarter approach to healthcare is one that turns data into clinical and business insights for better outcomes. It instruments processes with those insights in real time for point of care decisions and productivity. And hospitals, medical centres and clinicians can work smarter by bringing seamless, patient-centered, holistic and proactive approaches into their interactions with a patient, to deliver better care experiences that emphasize prevention and wellness.
Forward-thinking organizations are connecting their healthcare data, systems and processes to facilitate secure communications and information sharing. The IBM Institute for Business Insights provides proven return on investment for such iniatives (US). Taking this step can help establish the foundation for smarter healthcare systems that seamlessly deliver integrated care, centered on the patient.

The ability to deliver precise answers to support a medical diagnosis could go a long way toward addressing a key challenge facing physicians. Watson, the IBM computing system designed to play Jeopardy!, could help physicians to deliver more accurate diagnosis and treatment decisions.

Ultimately,the goal is a more coordinated,aligned and efficient healthcare delivery system, one where clinicians will have clinical evidence and greater clarity to what is needed to improve the health for specific
individuals and for communities,at a cost that is sustainable.
This is a most exciting time for the healthcare industry and many organizations are embracing the opportunity.Change done well has the potential to truly reinvent care,outcomes and cost,providing a great foundation for the future.
Barry Burk
Vice-President Healthcare industry,IBM Canada
Healthcare Insights
Analytics Across the Ecosystem: A Prescription for Optimizing Healthcare Outcomes
From Evidence to Insight - Achieving Outcomes that Matter Executive Report
Redefining Value and Success in Healthcare: Charting the Path to the Future
The Value of Analytics in Healthcare: From Insights to Outcomes
Social Services Innovation & Transformation Symposium
Join us in Toronto - Dec 11
IBM Thought Leadership Whitepapers
IBM Smarter Care: Impact at the point of care
The evolving promise of genomic medicine
On Demand Webcasts
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Analytics Across the Healthcare Ecosystem
Transforming Healthcare with Care Process Management featuring The Ottawa Hospital
Managing our 'top 1%' - Integrating Acute and Primary Care
From Evidence to Insights -Achieving Outcomes that Matter
Improving Healthcare Outcomes with Advanced Analytics
A Collaborative Approach to Identity Management featuring the BC Services Card
Individuals will be served by collaborative, coordinated health systems.
Governments
Address the current lack of sustainability by providing leadership and political willpower, removing obstacles, encouraging innovation and guiding countries to sustainable solutions.
Communities
Make realistic, rational decisions regarding lifestyle expectations, acceptable behaviors and healthcare rights and economies.
Pharmaceuticals and Device Manufacturers
Work collaboratively with care delivery organizations, clinicians and individuals to create products that improve outcomes and lower costs.
Care Delivery Orgaznizations
Expand the current focus on episodic acute care to encompass the enhanced management of chronic diseases and the life-long prediction and prevention od illness.
Doctors and other Caregivers
Develop partnership with individuals, payers/health plans and other stakeholders, collaborating to promote and deliver more evidence-based and more personalized healthcare.
Payers and Health Plans
Help individuals remain healthy and get more value from the healthcare system while assisting care delivery organizations and clinicians in delivering higher-value healthcare.
Essential steps to smarter healthcare
The healthcare industry now needs to perform on a more competitive, outcomes basis, shifting from fee for service to value based on quality and cost. Here are a few examples of organizations that are focusing on different aspects of quality and making real progress.

Efficiency and quality of care
Healthcare organizations can use analytics to uncover insights to identify and act on meaningful trends in clinical and quality indicators, making processes more efficient.
- Servicio Extremeño de Salud (SES) improved patient care with an integrated healthcare information management system.
- Antwerp Hospital Network in Belgium accelerated time to obtain financial results with a new information management solution based on IBM Cognos 8 BI.
- The University of North Carolina (US) unified multiple data sources in a robust data warehouse solution, making it possible to support a research agenda that includes cohort selection, quality improvement and disease management.

Clinician effectiveness
Whether at the bedtime, in the operating room or the emergency department, the time that care providers spend with patients is of the utmost value.
- Saint Michael's Medical Center (US) uses smart automatic tracking systems to help eliminate inefficiency, improve patient safety and save hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost and underutilized equipment. It also prevents caregivers from spending valuable patient care time looking for the equipment they need.
- University of Pittsburgh Medical Center developed SmartRoom, a workflow optimization system that leverages clinical intelligence to guide nursing decisions and activities.

Bringing better healthcare home
Emergency rooms are extremely stressful and unpredictable places. Toronto East General recently introduced a wireless communication device called the Vocera communicator, implemented with IBM. It allows workers to communicate with security by simply double-tapping the device. Users can also control the device with naturally spoken commands. Vocera has reduced response time to "Code White" alarms for security incidents from two and half minutes to 59 seconds. The solution also cuts down phone tag, overhead paging and the need to physically search for a person, making it easier for staff to communicate quickly, securely and efficiently throughout the hospital.
For the 800-bed Kingston General Hospital (PDF, 888KB) in Ontario, Vocera is the "must have" communications tool that nurses found helped to reduce by 25% the time they spent on phone calls, paging and tracking people down, while increasing the time spent on direct patient care.

Improve care for patients with chronic disease
According to the World Health Organization, heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes, are by far the leading cause of mortality in the world, representing 60% of all deaths.
- During the long running chronic disease management process, Peking University People's Hospital (US) helps patients and clinicians clearly understand what clinical activities took place in the past, what actions should be taken at the point of care, and the next steps to take.
- Reports and proactive alerts for disease management can help physicians to better serve the needs of their patients and improve outcomes.

Use genetic insights to help diagnose hereditary disease
Incorporating individualized patient information into analyses using advanced analytics can help to determine more effective treatments.
- Italy's Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute (US) sought stronger tools to study the genetic underpinnings of rare hereditary bone diseases. With IBM, they developed a first-of-a-kind pedigree analytics platform that integrates genomic data, medical images and family history into a powerful research tool.
