System Science

Zarin Anika

SSIE 637 Final Exam

Question 1— Analytics, Business Intelligence, Informatics, and Big Data

Business Analytics

Business analytics is a more statistically and mathematically driven approach than business intelligence. It answer questions, such as 'Why did this happen?', 'What if these trends continue?', 'What will happen next?', and 'What is the optimal outcome?'

Informatics

Informatics focuses on computer systems from a user-centered perspective and studies the structure, behavior and interactions of natural and artificial systems.

Business Intelligence

Business intelligence has to do with analyzing data and presenting a high-level set of reports that condense the essence of data into the basis of business action. It can help answer questions, such as 'What happened?', 'How many?', 'How often?', 'Where? 'and 'What actions are needed?.'

Big Data

Big data involves extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions. Big data can be either structured or unstructured.

How big does data have to be for us to start calling it big data?

Big data is relative, so what is large today might not be so large tomorrow. Currently, big data is data that larger than 1 terabyte (TB).

Case Study: Business Intelligence

Seattle Children's Hospital has recorded 375,000 outpatient visits and 77,000 inpatient visits in 2013, and is consistently ranked among the best children's hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report magazine. To maintain its high standard of patient care, Seattle Children’s Hospital recognized the need to gain insight from increasing volumes of data to support clinicians, medical staff, and business intelligence initiatives. The hospital uses IBM® PureData™ System for Analytics and Brightlight’s Netezza Data Integration Framework (nzDIF) to integrate and analyze complex data to identify commonalities for new treatment protocols. This promotes efficient, self-service business intelligence throughout the hospital; achieves query response times in seconds, rather than minutes; and enables insight from information for more effective diagnosis and treatment. (Source: http://www-03.ibm.com/software/businesscasestudies/hk/en/corp?synkey=P149231U57524E10)

        The concept of "bundled payments" is a newer approach to payment which provides both the physician and the hospital a fixed amount to take care of an episode of care or for a time period of care, in the case of patients with chronic conditions. Bundled payments, or case rates, is a simpler method for coordinating care. It would pay providers for an individual's episode of care instead of the individual treatments provided. A bundled payment could span multiple providers and settings, which would create incentives for practitioners and providers to communicate and coordinate their care plan. Bundled payments would not require a set of providers to be part of the same organization and would not specify how the care should be coordinated, but would provide a financial incentive and peer pressure to do so effectively. Bundled payments could be used for both acute and chronic care management.