Healthcare Analytics Heats Up

Big data is too complicated to tackle alone. A number of recent moves show that healthcare industry players recognize the need to extend their own capabilities to really help their client base better understand and serve targeted populations and drive up medical outcomes.

The latest move by a service provider is the Accenture Operations partnership with Duke University for applying analytics to big data, starting with a focus on health care. The nucleus of the initiative is population health, and the ecosystem includes the Information Initiative at Duke (IID) and the Duke Health System. HfS views this move as a smart one for Accenture Operations in tapping into the energy of students who can work together and into the experience, tools, and network of the IID and Duke Health System.

Accenture has a broad client base in health care, particularly with payers in the U.S., and in order to create additional value, recognizes the need to move beyond transaction processing and build analytics capabilities into its work. This move enables them to enter into an existing ecosystem at Duke University to build tools, skills, and capabilities to then potentially re-use with clients. However, how much this effort will reflect in results for Accenture’s broader client base remains to be seen. Is this a “sandbox” effort for experimenting with models applied to real Duke Health System data, or mock data that will lead to reusable IP with Accenture clients?

The healthcare operations market is highly competitive and commoditized at this point—plenty of service providers with depth and capability for processing transactions, and plenty of rising stars focused on healthcare analytics. EXL went the route of acquiring Blue Slate to build on its analytics capabilities; Health Catalyst partnered with Allina Health and then recently acquired Health Care DataWorks; Xerox acquired Healthy Communities Institute (HCI).

Service providers are quickly moving into partnerships and acquisitions, realizing that the big data problem is too big to solve alone. Each of these moves brings together big data, health care expertise, and modeling and analytics capabilities.

Each of these moves provides payers, healthcare providers, and other healthcare organizations increasingly unique options for better understanding their constituents and driving administrative and medical outcomes.