Some thoughts on health and healthcare

Introduction For years, health systems treated data chiefly as an administrative exhaust - useful for counting admissions, tracking length of stay, and producing dashboards for managers. This was business intelligence (BI): retrospective, descriptive, and centered on operations. Data-driven medicine is changing the locus and purpose of analytics. The same raw material - structured records, images, waveforms, and patient-generated data - is being refashioned into clinical intelligence (CI): timely, patient-specific insights that guide diagnosis, treatment, safety, and outcomes at the bedside and in the community. The shift is not just in algorithms; it’s in intent, evidence standards, workflow design, and governance. What distinguishes clinical intelligence from business intelligence? Time horizon and actionability . BI typically looks backward to summarize what happened; CI pulls signals forward to anticipate deterioration, suggest differentials, or tailor therapies. A utilization hea...

From 22 until 26 May 2023, the first UHasselt Summer School on Big Data for Health and Care was organized by Liesbet M. Peeters and her team of the  Research Group in Biomedical Data Sciences ( Big Data for Health and Care - Summer School ). The Summer School gave some fascinating insights on the potential of big data to revolutionize the way we approach healthcare challenges. The increasing availability of healthcare data will have the potential to gain new insights into disease prevention, diagnosis, crisis management, and treatment. Consequently, the power of big data in healthcare can make a meaningful impact on patient outcomes and how we deal with our healthcare challenges on a national and European scale. Many thanks to Liesbet Peeters and her colleagues for organizing this inspiring and exciting week. Many thanks also to Noëlla Pierlet (ZOL) and Peter De Jaeger (AZ Delta), to name a few, for the inspiring discussions. It was a pleasure to exchange ideas and inspiration w...