Data Mining by Hospitals

Article Summary

Pettypiece, S., & Robertson, J. (2014, July 3). Hospitals Are Mining Patients' Credit Card Data to Predict Who Will Get Sick. From http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-03/hospitals-are-mining-patients-creditcard-data-to-predict-who-will-get-sick SUMMARY Shannon Pettypiece and Jordan Robertson, reporters of Bloomberg News, reviewed and analyzed use of data mining technique in Health Care industries. They have mentioned various outcomes that would occur from mining patient’s personal information on daily basis which would help Health industries to intervene high-risk patients before they could get sick. Carolinas HealthCare System which operates 900 care centers which includes hospitals, nursing homes, doctors’ offices, and surgical centers have collected consumer data of 2 million people from brokers who obtain public records. The data collected was used to study the health patterns of their patient’s and thus providing medical advice even before they could get sick. Michael Dulin, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes research and also a practicing physician at Carolinas HealthCare states “Information on consumer spending can provide a more complete picture than the glimpse doctors get during an office visit or through lab results.” The HealthCare Center believes implementation of Big Data and predictive models about people’s health would help to provide proper medical guidance to an individual even before getting into health troubles. Similarly, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center which operates more than 20 hospitals in Pennsylvania and a health insurance plan, is using demographic and household data to try to improve patients’ health. Being able to predict which patients are likely to get sick or end up at the ER has become particularly valuable for hospitals that also insure their patients, a relatively new practice that’s growing in popularity. UPMC, because it offers insurance, would be able to save money by keeping...