Digital Transformation - The Use Cases: Healthcare
Digital Transformation: Charité University Hospital in Berlin
The Charité University Hospital in Berlin is always seeking new ways to improve its healthcare. New innovations and improvements can yield big benefits, as Charité has over 150,000 patients yearly and employs over 3,800 doctors. Technology offers the convenience and capability to equip its doctors with mobility and deeper insights. So far, Charité has tapped into in-memory data technology and mobile devices, making it an admirable example of digital transformation for others in healthcare or beyond.
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Trigger
It's no news to anyone, let alone to Charité researchers, that the amount of data is growing. With a 30 percent yearly increase of digital data, Charité researchers sought a solution that would allow them to collect insights from these data. This high-quality in-house analytics system would have to be as fast and as easy to use as Google's search. More important, it would have to be flexible and powerful enough to handle millions of data points.
Transformation
Rather than blindly adopting the "latest and greatest" technologies, Charité first honed in on key questions by brainstorming use cases. What is possible with technology? Where can it have the greatest impact for patient care and healthcare research? In which areas can the university improve? Can technology find ways to identify trends in patient cases?
After creating a roadmap, Charité took action by implementing in-memory technology. In doing so, Charité can harness the data from its extensive medical records. For example, Charité now uses its cancer database to select patients for clinical trials. Already, more than 600 users are taking advantage of this technology.
Benefits
Charité analyzes data merged from its cancer and medical administration databases to find the best candidates for each new trial. The data solution carefully examines a large variety of data -- tumor types, gender, age, risk factors, treatments, and diagnoses. Both structured and unstructured data are analyzed, giving Charité's identification process even greater accuracy. Charité doctors can also use mobile devices to quickly and more efficiently access patient data.
Deploying a comprehensive big data solution gives Charité a competitive edge over other prospective research partners, provides its patients with superior healthcare and enhances the way its employees work. The improvements and innovations continue. Charité is looking ahead and aims to add DNA data so that they can analyze up to 500,000 data points per patient.
Hopefully, this level of digital initiative will be spread across the entire healthcare industry, so that patients everywhere can receive better care. Of course, all businesses can learn from Charité with their own digital transformations.
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Digital Transformation Series: The wrap
Digital Transformation, Part 7: The Outlook
Digital Transformation, Part 6: Examples of digital transformation done right
Digital Transformation, Part 5: Transformation by Industry
Digital Transformation, Part 4: The Role of Leadership
Digital Transformation, Part 3: The Building Blocks