Analytics@

The U.S. government provides a variety of publicly available databases that include metrics on the performance of US hospitals, including patient experience (PX) database, health outcome database, process of care database and medical spending database. Applying Big Data principles on these disparate data sources, I integrated different metrics from their respective databases to better understand the quality of US hospitals and determine ways they can improve the patient experience and the overall healthcare delivery system. I spent the summer analyzing this data, and wrote many posts about it.

Why the Patient Experience (PX) has Become an Important Topic for U.S. Hospitals

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will be using patient feedback about their care as part of their reimbursement plan for acute care hospitals (see Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program). The purpose of the VBP program is to promote better clinical outcomes for patients and improve their experience of care during hospital stays. Not surprisingly, hospitals are focusing on improving the patient experience to ensure they receive the maximum of their incentive payments.

Key Findings from Analyses of Big Data of US Hospitals

Hospitals, like all big businesses, struggle with knowing “if you do this, then you will succeed with this.” While hospital administrators can rely on gut feelings, intuition and anecdotal evidence to guide their decisions on how to improve their hospitals, data-driven decision-making provides better, more reliable, insights about real things hospital administrators can do to improve their hospitals. While interpretation of my analyses of these Big Data are debatable, the data are what they are.

I have highlighted some key findings below (with accompanying blog posts) that provide value for different constituencies: 1) healthcare consumers can find the best hospitals, 2) healthcare providers can focus on areas that improve how they deliver healthcare, and 3) healthcare researchers can uncover deeper insights about factors that impact the patient experience and health outcomes.

1. Healthcare Consumers Can Use Interactive Maps of US Hospital Ratings to Select the Best Provider. Healthcare consumers can use interactive maps to understand the quality of their hospitals with respect to three metrics: 1) Map of US hospitals on patient satisfaction, 2) Map of US hospitals on health outcomes, and 3) Map of US hospitals on process of care. Take a look at each to know how your hospital performs.
2. Hospitals Can Use Patient Surveys to Improve Patient Loyalty. Hospitals might be focusing on the wrong areas to improve patient loyalty. While researchers found that hospitals’ top 3 priorities to improve the patient experience are focused on 1) reducing noise, 2) improving patient rounding and 3) the improving the discharge process and instructions, analysis of HCAHPS survey results show that hospitals will likely receive greater return on their improvement investment (ROI) if they focus on improving the patient experience along these dimensions: 1) pain management, 2) staff responsiveness and 3) staff explaining meds.
3. There are Differences in the Patient Experience across Acute Care and Critical Access Hospitals. Acute care hospitals receive lower patient satisfaction ratings compared to critical access hospitals. Differences across these two types of hospitals also extends to ways to improve the patient experience. The key areas for improving patient loyalty/advocacy differ across hospital types. ACHs need to focus on 1) Staff explains meds, 2) Responsiveness and 3) Pain management. CAHs need to focus on 1) Pain management and 2) Responsiveness.
4. Patient Satisfaction is Related to Health Outcomes and Process of Care Measures. The patient experience that had the highest correlation with readmission rates and process of care measures was “Given Information about my Recovery upon discharge“.  Hospitals who received good patient ratings on this dimension also experienced lower readmission rates and higher process of care scores compared to hospitals with poor patient ratings in this area.
5. Medical Spending is Not Related to Patient Satisfaction. I found that hospitals with lower medical spend per patient are able to deliver a comparable patient experience to hospitals with greater medical spend per patient.

The value of insights gained from combining, integrating disparate databases (especially ones including both attitudinal and operational/objective metrics) provide much greater value than any single database can provide by itself.  That is one of the major values of using Big Data principles. The integrated health care Big Data set provided rich in insights and allowed us to answer bigger questions about how to best improve the patient experience and health outcomes.

Source: Big Data Provides Big Insights for U.S. Hospitals by bobehayes

This post originally appeared on dbSeer, a business analytics consulting firm and Logi Analytics partner.

As an increasing number of companies are moving their infrastructure to Microsoft’s Azure, it seems natural to rely on its Active Directory for user authentication. Logi application users can also reap the benefits of this enterprise level security infrastructure without having to duplicate anything. Additionally, even smaller companies who use Office365 without any other infrastructure on the cloud, excluding email of course, can take advantage of this authentication.

Integrating Logi applications with Microsoft’s Active Directory produces two main benefits: attaining world class security for your Logi applications, and simplifying matters by having a single source of authentication. The following post describes how this integration is done.

1. Register Your Application with Microsoft

First, register your application with Azure Active Directory v. 2.0. This will allow us to request an access token from Microsoft for the user. To do this navigate to “https://apps.dev.microsoft.com/#/appList,” and click the “Add an app” button. After entering your application name, on the following page, click the “Add Platform” button and select “Web”. Under Redirect URLs, enter the URL of your website logon page (sample format: https:////.jsp). Microsoft does not support redirects to http sites, so your page must either use https or localhost. Make note of the redirect URL and application ID for the next step.

2. Create Custom Log-on Page for Logi Application

Microsoft allows users to give permissions to an application using their OAuth2 sign-in page. This process returns an access token, which has a name, email address, and several other pieces of information embedded within which we use to identify the user.

These next steps show you how to create a log-in page that redirects users to the Microsoft sign-in, retrieves the access token, and passes whichever value you want to use to identify the employee to Logi.

1) Download the rdLogonCustom.jsp file or copy paste the contents into a file. Place it in the base folder of your application.
2) Configure the following settings within the rdLogonCustom.jsp file to match your Logi application:

Change the ‘action’ element in the HTML body to the address of your main Logi application page:

Change the “redirectUri” and “appId” in the buildAuthUrl() function to match the information from your application registration with Azure AD v2.0:

The sample log-on page redirects the user to Microsoft’s page, allows the user to sign in before redirecting back to the log-on page. At the log-on page, it parses the token for the email address, passes the value to the authentication element using the hidden input to pass as a request parameter.

If you want to use a different value from the access token to identify the user, adjust the key in the “document.getElementById(‘email’).value = payload.” in the bottom of the custom logon file to match your desired value.

3. Configure Logi App

In your _Settings.lgx file, add a security element with the following settings:

*If your log-on page and failure page have different names, adjust accordingly.
Under the security element, add an authentication element with a data layer that uses the value found in @Request.email~ to identify the user. Optionally, you can add rights and roles elements to the security element as well.

In conclusion, utilizing this integration for your Logi applicatons can not only make your process more efficient by eliminating a duplicate authentication, but it can also provide for an added level of security because of Microsoft’s robust infrastructure.

Source: Logi Tutorial: How to Integrate Logi with Microsoft Active Directory for Enhanced User Authentication

Source: Removing Silos & Operationalizing Your Data: The Key to Analytics – Part 3, Data Integration

Big data is a trend that I’ve followed for some time now, and even though it’s still in its early stages, I expect it to continue to be a game changer as we move further into the future.

As our Internet footprint has grown, all the data we create — from credit cards to passwords and pictures uploaded on Instagram — has to be managed somehow.

This data is too vast to be entered into traditional relational databases, so more powerful tools are needed for companies to utilize the information to analyze customers’ behavior and predict what they may do in the future.

Big data makes it all possible, and as a result is one of the dominant themes for technology growth investing. We’ve invested in several of these types of companies in my GameChangers service over the years, one of which we’ll talk more about in just a moment.

First, let’s start with two of the biggest and best big data names out there. They’re among the best pure plays, and while I’m not sure the time is quite right to invest in either right now, they are both garnering some buzz in the tech world.

Big Data Stocks: Splunk (SPLK)

The first is Splunk (SPLK). Splunk’s flagship product is Splunk Enterprise, which at its core is a proprietary machine data engine that enables dynamic creation on the fly. Users can then run queries on data without having to understand the structure of the information prior to collection and indexing.

Faster, streamlined processes mean more efficient (and more profitable) businesses.

While Splunk is very small in terms of revenues, with January 2015 fiscal year sales of just $451 million, it is growing rapidly, and I’m keeping an eye on the name as it may present a strong opportunity down the road.

However, I do not want to overpay for it. Splunk brings effective technology to the table that is gaining market acceptance, and has strong security software partners with its recent entry into security analytics. At the right price, the stock could also be a takeover candidate for a larger IT company looking to enhance its Big Data presence.

Big Data Stocks: Tableau Software (DATA)

Another name on my radar is Tableau Software (DATA), which performs similar functions as Splunk’s. Its primary product, VizQL, translates drag-and-drop actions into data queries. In this way, the company puts data directly in the hands of decision makers, without first having to go through technical specialists.

In fact, the company believes all employees, no matter what their rank in the company, can use their product, leading to the democratization of data.

DATA is also growing rapidly, even faster than Splunk. Revenues were up 78% in 2014, and 75% in the first quarter of 2015, including license revenue growth of more than 70%. That rate is expected to slow somewhat, with revenues for all of 2015 estimated to increase to a still strong 50%.

Tableau stock is also very expensive, trading at 12X expected 2015 revenues of $618 million and close to 300X projected EPS of 40 cents for the year. DATA is a little risky to buy at current levels, but it is a name to keep an eye on in any pullback.

Big Data Stocks: Red Hat (RHT)

The company we made money on earlier this year in my GameChangers service isRed Hat (RHT). We booked a 15% profit in just a few months after it popped 11% on fourth-quarter earnings.

Red Hat is the world’s largest leading provider of open-source solutions, providing software to 90% of Fortune 500 companies. Some of RHT’s customers include well-known names like Sprint (S), Adobe Systems (ADBE) and Cigna Corporation (CI).

Management’s goal is to become the undisputed leader of enterprise cloud computing, and it sees its popular Linux operating system as a way to the top. If RHT is successful — as I expect it will be — Red Hat should have a lengthy period of expanded growth as corporations increasingly move into the cloud.

Red Hat’s operating results had always clearly demonstrated that its solutions are gaining greater acceptance in IT departments, as revenues had more doubled in the five years between 2009 and 2014 from $748 million to $1.53 billion. I had expected to see the strong sales growth continue throughout 2015, and it did. As I mentioned, impressive fiscal fourth-quarter results sent the shares 11% higher.

I recommended my subscribers sell their stake in the company at the end of March because I believed any further near-term upside was limited. Since then, shares have traded mostly between $75 and $80. It is now at the very top of that range and may be on the verge of breaking above it after the company reported fiscal first-quarter results last night.

Although orders were a little slow, RHT beat estimates on both the top and bottom lines in the first quarter. Earnings of 44 cents per share were up 29% quarter-over-quarter, besting estimates on the Street for earnings of 41 cents. Revenue climbed 14% to $481 million, while analysts had been expecting $472.6 million.

At this point, RHT is now back in uncharted territory, climbing to a new 52-week high earlier today. This is a company with plenty of growth opportunities ahead, and while growth may slow a bit in the near term following the stock’s impressive climb so far this year, RHT stands to gain as corporation continue to adopt additional cloud technologies.

To read the original article on InvestorPlace, click here.

Source

Today’s financial service providers operate almost entirely online, and every single transaction and penny transmitted creates hundreds of data points. These massive amounts of data can be incredibly valuable when properly processed, scrubbed, and analyzed. Most importantly, they can help financial services providers make smarter, faster decisions that are backed more by data than intuition.

Even so, it’s important to know which data is valuable to track, and the best ways to measure it. The foundation of most smart financial dashboards is a clear understanding of the metrics and key performance indicators necessary for discerning important insights. More importantly, the process to finding the right uses for big data begins with understanding where your data comes from, and how you can measure it best.

Find The Right Data Streams and KPIs

Creating a powerful financial analytics tool begins with knowing your data sources and identifying the right ways to track them. Data comes from a variety of channels and can prove useful for different types of analysis and metrics.

• Expenses and Revenues – Regardless of the specific services you provide, every company has overheads and revenues that provide important historic and trend data. This data can include payrolls, income from transactions, operational costs, and fixed costs such as leases, utility costs, and debt payments.
• Transactions – Volumes of transactions alone are not a reliable measure of a business’ success. A series of investments that cost more than they earn isn’t made better with bigger numbers. Transaction data can display the cost of every deal or investment as well as its margins.
• Periodic Financial Data – For financial services companies like investment funds, banks, and lenders, understanding growth over time (with measures like cumulative annual growth rate) is crucial for updating investment and lending strategies, as well as building new ones.
• Shareholder Data – This stream includes information about shareholders’ benefits, dividends, and earnings. Information about dividends paid as a percentage of profits, earnings per share, and even the value of shares provides useful data for making major financial decisions.
• Debt Data – For most financial services providers, client debt can represent both an asset and a liability. Lenders must keep track of outstanding debts, paid ones, and interest rates. It is also an important consideration when making investments, expanding, setting future strategies and lending levels, and understanding the impact of transactions and loan decisions.

Examples of Data Visualizations in Financial Services

The most valuable visualizations for financial services providers deliver a clear understanding of historic data and offer potential trends and insights. Some of the most relevant big data use cases in financial services focus around the performance of long-term assets like investments, loans, and other financial products. As such, the right big data analytics tools feature a combination of short and long-term data visualizations that provide a more comprehensive view of a financial services company’s performance:

• Profit & Loss – Profit and loss (P&L) visualizations help build your understanding of profits and costs on an historic basis. This allows you to track real-time changes and measure the impact of strategy changes and new policies. Moreover, P&L visualizations help you identify where profit margins can be widened and which areas of the business are more profitable and valuable relative to others.



Explore Dashboard



• Loan Volumes and Outstanding Loans – Visualizing the number of outstanding loans helps providers form a better understanding of policy efficacy and which customers are more likely to pay on time. Interpreting the number of loans can indicate consumer preferences and possible areas for heightened profitability. Comparing it to outstanding and delinquent loans can help highlight the effectiveness of underwriting processes and loan extensions.
• Investment Portfolio Performance – Most financial services providers keep their funds in a combination of cash on hand and diversified investments. Tracking investment portfolios’ performances can help you allocate resources to optimize profits while concurrently advancing better liquidity and financial stability over the long-term. It can also highlight under-performing assets and lead to better reinvestment decisions.



Explore Dashboard



• Relative Income Per Customer Type – Banks, lenders, and other financial services providers cater to a variety of customers and needs. Understanding each revenue stream’s profitability helps companies make better decisions about which customers to pursue more aggressively and where to allocate more resources. Additionally, it can highlight trends among customer types for services such as loans and mortgages.

Smart Financial Dashboard Design

The best financial services dashboard includes both high-level and granular visualizations that provide a fuller picture. By understanding how specific areas are performing (such as outstanding loans, income per customer type, and more) in conjunction with broader data such as P&L and CAGR, you can make smarter strategic decisions and allocate your company’s resources in a manner that leads to operational and profitability optimization.

Originally Posted at: The Best Big Data Applications for Financial Services by analyticsweek

Click to enlarge

Source: Econsultancy

Source by v1shal