Most healthcare facilities are gathering data with electronic medical records or software systems on patient outcomes, costs and histories. But there’s a gap between gathering the data and interpreting what it means for every-day practice. Most nurses and physicians aren’t trained as data analysts; they can see the datasets and understand them on the surface level, but there is a bigger opportunity for improvement — and Watson can bridge the gap, according to a Forbes report.
Here are five key notes:
1. Watson could allow users to run the data for results and click on a hyperlink to explore the statistical details. Watson and other Natural Language Processing tools can interpret the data analytics, making complex analytics easy to digest for most professionals.
2. There are more than 400 universities using NLP technology as part of data analysis, and there are some in the article predicting data analysis will become critical to jobs across the spectrum going forward.
3. Users can bring questions to Watson with the data, or just upload data and Watson will be able to infer what the user wants to know.
4. IBM envisions Watson being able to create “citizen data scientists” so people who aren’t focused on analytics or don’t have the education around interpreting them can benefit from data-driven insights, according to the report.
5. In one case outlined in the report, students input data on asthma emergency room visits looking for what predicted emergency room visits and hospital admissions, among other issues. They received descriptive statistics, predictive analytics and visualizations with charts and dashboards around their question.
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