In recent years, the Healthcare and Life Sciences (HLS) industry have experienced significant transformations, driven by the convergence of Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). This convergence has reshaped various aspects of the industry, including patient care management, clinical decision-making processes, research endeavors, and operational efficiency.
The global AI in healthcare market is making waves, reaching an estimated size of $19.27 billion in 2023. Furthermore, it's expected to grow at a rapid rate of 38.5% from 2024 to 2030, thus promising to revolutionize the industry. This growth is driven by healthcare organizations recognizing the importance of improving efficiency, accuracy, and better patient outcomes. A study by Microsoft and IDC in March 2024 found that 79% of healthcare organizations are already using AI technology.
Modern Data and AI platforms are at the forefront of this revolutionary transformation, unlocking a world of new possibilities for improving patient outcomes, expediting scientific breakthroughs, and reshaping healthcare delivery paradigms. By investing in Data and AI, organizations operating within these sectors can drive innovation, foster collaboration, save cost, and make a significant impact on the health and well-being of individuals. In fact, the return on investment (ROI) is realized within 14 months, generating $3.20 for every $1 invested in AI.
Healthcare's Key Data Challenges
The healthcare industry is characterized by the complexity, sensitivity, and strict regulations surrounding its data. While the potential of modern data and AI platforms is undeniable, healthcare organizations must navigate a complex landscape to fully realize their benefits. Here are some key challenges that the healthcare industry faces:
Data Silos
Fragmented data across disparate systems hinder seamless access and integration, making it difficult to extract valuable insights.
Data Quality
Ensuring data quality and safeguarding sensitive patient information against cyberattacks remain as ongoing struggles.
Regulatory Compliance
Compliance with various regulations, such as HIPAA and GDPR, adds another layer of complexity, necessitating robust governance frameworks.
Interoperability
The lack of standardization complicates the interoperability of data exchange among different healthcare systems and devices.
Actionable Insights & Scalability
Extracting actionable insights from vast amounts of data requires advanced analytics capabilities. Scalability challenges arise with the exponential growth of data, especially with the adoption of digital health technologies.
Balancing Innovation & Responsibility
Striking a balance between data-driven innovation, ethical principles, and regulatory compliance is important. But this might pose further complexities that demand careful consideration and collaboration among stakeholders.
Despite 95% of healthcare executives prioritizing digital transformation, the lack of data readiness is preventing them from making permanent changes. To effectively address these obstacles, it is crucial to have robust technology capabilities supported by governance frameworks and solid infrastructure.
Healthcare Solutions by Microsoft Fabric
Enter Microsoft Fabric – an end-to-end, unified analytics platform that brings together all the necessary data and analytics tools organizations need. Fabric goes beyond generic solutions by offering industry-specific capabilities designed to address the unique challenges faced by HLS industry. By tailoring data solutions to the specific needs of the healthcare industry, Microsoft Fabric empowers organizations to unlock the full potential of their data and achieve optimal results.
When combined with Healthcare industry solutions, Microsoft Fabric offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities to build a robust Data and AI platform tailored to address the challenges mentioned above. Healthcare data solutions within Microsoft Fabric provide an holistic, analytics SaaS platform that enables organizations to ingest, store, and analyze healthcare data from various sources, including electronic health records, picture archiving, communication systems, and more.
Enterprises can expedite their time-to-value by leveraging Microsoft Fabric's healthcare industry solutions. The platform allows organizations to efficiently manage the complexities of healthcare data and harness the transformative potential of Data and AI-driven insights. The below is a reference architecture how these components come together to form a cohesive solution.
Data Ingestion
With native connectors like Fabric Data Factory and Azure Health Data Services (FHIR Datasets), organizations can easily ingest a wide array of data from disparate sources into OneLake storage within Microsoft Fabric. OneLake serves as a unified data management solution, efficiently storing large volumes of data, breaking down silos, and offering cost-effective storage. It is seamlessly integrated into every Microsoft Fabric tenant, eliminating the need for additional infrastructure management
Data Management
Implement the medallion architecture pattern using Microsoft OneLake and Lakehouse capabilities. This architecture pattern involves organizing data across three layers: Bronze (Raw), Silver (Curated and Augmented), and Gold (Business-level Aggregated) layers (Lakehouse) to facilitate seamless data processing and analytics. This multi-layered approach establishes a single source of truth for enterprise data products. The lakehouse architecture in Microsoft Fabric combines both Data Lakes and Data Warehouses, storing data in open file format (delta-parquet) and this enables to run large-scale analytics workloads in a cost-effective manner.
Data Engineering
Leverage Microsoft Fabric's Synapse Data Engineering Notebooks (Apache Spark-based), Fabric Data Factory, Synapse Realtime Analytics capabilities to develop scalable data pipelines. These pipelines consolidate and transform data according to target data domains and analytics data stores, aligning with industry-standard data models (e.g. FHIR). This ensures interoperability and adherence to industry standards.
Analytics and Insights
To access and derive actionable insights from healthcare data within Microsoft Fabric, organizations can utilize familiar tools such as Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse SQL-endpoint, Synapse Data Science Notebooks, Power BI (with copilot), and Azure OpenAI Services. Examples include patient cohort analysis, risk stratification models, and longitudinal patient view, empowering organization make informed decision-making and driving innovations.
Platform Operationalization
Integrate Azure DevOps capabilities seamlessly with Microsoft Fabric to automate and streamline the operationalization of data platforms. This integration enables faster delivery of changes, improved reliability, and enhanced collaboration among development, operations, and data teams, ensuring efficient data platform management and evolution.
Comprehensive Data Governance
Azure Purview and Microsoft Fabric together provide a holistic data governance solution tailored for the healthcare and life sciences industry. This solution enables organizations to establish and enforce robust data governance standards and processes, ensuring data privacy, regulatory compliance, and data quality. By leveraging these technologies, organizations can harness the full potential of their data, driving innovation, improving patient outcomes, and maintaining the highest standards of data governance and security.
Microsoft Fabric offers a powerful solution for the data challenges plaguing the healthcare industry. It enables seamless integration, efficient data management, and innovative patient engagement features. But implementing and harnessing its full potential requires expertise. Sonata played a pivotal role in the development of Microsoft Fabric and were honored to be its Featured and Launch Partner. Our team possesses deep industry knowledge and extensive experience in crafting customized solutions for the unique problems faced by healthcare organizations. Contact Sonata today to discuss how we can help you leverage this powerful platform to achieve your digital transformation goals.