The healthcare climate has changed, and consumer centricity in healthcare is now more important than ever. In order to better serve consumers, enact more personalized healthcare communication programs and develop more sustainable health programs that influence the lives of consumers for the better in the future, it is necessary for health providers and payers to leverage big data in new and innovative ways. There are huge stores of data available for healthcare industry insiders to take advantage of in order to profile consumers and ultimately better serve them through programs such as digital dashboards that are easily accessible to consumers, employers and healthcare payers.

What Kind of Data is Most Useful?

Successful healthcare consumer centricity programs take many different kinds of information into account. Healthcare payers and providers can better serve consumers with tailored communications and personalized programs by first obtaining the following types of data in a central repository:

• Behaviors – Information about lifestyle choices and behaviors that pertain to diet, exercise, activity, sleep patterns and other habits can be very helpful. These may be obtained through information from various databases, surveys and other records of interactions with consumers.
  Claims – All claims tell a story, and can be used to tailor more personalized experiences for and communication with consumers in the future. A well-managed electronic records database is essential here.
• Rx – Tracking and measuring pharmacy metrics can be very beneficial to healthcare payers, not only because it provides an opportunity to streamline cost initiatives, but also because it provides another opportunity to see what health choices consumers are making and where they’re spending their healthcare dollars.
• Biometric Devices – Since the dawn of the digital age, many advances have been made in the healthcare world, including the development of biometric devices that identify doctors and staff and gather vital information about patients. Statistics from these data records can be used to pinpoint trends, develop more customized healthcare products and services and make better predictions about healthcare outcomes.
• Tests (Blood) – The records of blood tests can also be used to develop better products and services for consumers. The more information that healthcare payers and providers have about the unique populations they serve, the more personalized communications, experiences and programs they can provide.
• Master Data (PHR, ethno-, techno-, socio- and demographic) – Perhaps the most useful chunk of data for profiling healthcare consumers is a master data file that includes demographics, personal health records, ethnographic information, socioeconomic information and all varieties of useful digital information about the group of consumers that a given healthcare organization serves.

What Can We Do With All This Data?

The goal of any successful consumer-profiling program should be to achieve the kind of strategic analytics that will support better health initiatives. Analytics can fuel tailored dashboards for consumers, employers and payers, which epitomize the new drive toward consumer centricity for healthcare payers. Such a dashboard provides a more convenient way for consumers to receive information from and communicate directly with healthcare payers and providers, which allows payers in particular to foster relationships with consumers that were not always possible in the past. These dashboards can also be used to gather more information about consumers in the future, and do so in a more organized, cost effective and streamlined way. In the end, the more insights a healthcare payer and/or provider can gain about the consumers they serve, the better prepared they will be to target personalized communications and develop more sustainable health programs in the future. It’s a win-win-win for the healthcare payer, the consumers who use their products and services and the employers who help provide health plans to their employees, when applicable.