Healthcare providers have historically gathered only clinical data, collecting information when patients needed health services. But collecting information across a broader spectrum provides a more holistic view of a patient and can improve strategies for providing care. Moreover, it can be an incredibly useful indicator of a patients long-term health.One poignant illustration of this is a story that was shared a few years ago by the CEO of a healthcare IT company at a panel discussion. It was about a mother who was reducing her childs asthma medication in August. It turned out the mother was trying to save money for back-to-school supplies. Traditionally, care providers wouldnt have been able to figure this out based on their limited data. But because more data gave them a wider field of view, they were able to intervene before an attempt at saving money led to increased costs and potential health problems down the road.More healthcare organizations are taking on fee for value payment contracts. In fact, 90 percent of Medicare fee-for-service payments are expected to be tied to quality by the end of this year. This approach provides incentive to care for patients by intervening before major health crises occur, which saves money in the long run. Data is a key ingredient when it comes to identifying which individuals need help, so collecting background and lifestyle information can improve care.Still, there are numerous obstacles to this approach. The prevalence of data breaches among healthcare organizations has aggravated concerns about data privacy, and many of these organizations lack the infrastructure or expertise to manage a large collection of data sets. Plus, aggregating and cleaning data is a prerequisite to any analytics efforts.

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