Health Integrated — Data Strategy

Summary

We performed an in-depth analysis of their business objectives, priorities, architecture, and data environment. The result is a roadmap for technical capability development that is designed to address those needs tied to the most pressing and valuable business aspirations. They are now equipped to move forward toward their goals.

Background and Business Problem

Health Integrated provides comprehensive care management to help patients create behavioral changes that lead to better health outcomes. They work with Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial health plans to help patients navigate the complexities of the healthcare ecosystem, adhere to care and prescription regimens, reduce emergency room visits and hospital admissions, and improve quality of life while reducing costs. As data and technology play a critical role in Health Integrated’s ability to achieve its aspirations, it is fundamentally a data-driven business.

Health Integrated’s existing data architecture and data supply chain were limiting innovation and rapid growth. The rigidity of their data architecture meant that every new customer required a separate custom integration project, resulting in a significant drag on growth. In order to expand the business and remain competitive, it was imperative that they figure out how to reduce system complexity, improve data quality and access, develop auditing and traceability mechanisms, and grow their analytical systems.

Health Integrated had many different options for technology investments they could make, but they weren’t sure where to start. With multiple problems to solve and limited skills in newer data and analytics technologies, the company wanted to make sure they made the right investments for both short-term returns and long-term success.

Solution

The SVDS team worked closely with Health Integrated executives in a collaborative workshop to identify and prioritize a set of strategic imperatives. These imperatives were then mapped to tangible business objectives. Working with product owners, project leads, and technologists, the SVDS team analyzed the business objectives to determine the technical use cases, and the data requirements necessary to deliver on them. Using our deep experience in data platforms, analytical best practices, and leading-edge technology, we then rationalized patterns of specific use cases into general technical and analytical workloads that would support multiple business objectives.

We assessed Health Integrated’s data environment and showed where data needs were complicated by two specific factors: data trapped in siloes, and the increasing variety of client data formats. Addressing these two key challenges would enable Health Integrated to grow, unencumbered by its technology platform. The analysis also highlighted ways in which Health Integrated could prepare for and take advantage of the opportunities that integrating additional data sources would provide.

SVDS then developed a technology roadmap to achieve Health Integrated’s business ambitions and address the data challenges in their technical environment. Health Integrated’s strategic priorities were used as a key input to drive analysis that relates the business goals to the technical solutions available. We then layered in other factors that influence technical decisions, such as technical dependencies, state of the relevant technology ecosystem, architectural fit, effort of production rollout, etc. All of this was brought together in the technology roadmap—which shows not just what to do, but also where to start to get the most value.

SVDS provided advice on technology strategy, including differentiated approaches to architecture and data management complementary to the suggested roadmap. This data strategy project lead naturally into the agile development process that we then executed together to build a new data platform. Health Integrated’s own analysis after the completion of that project indicated an impressive ROI, even over a short timeframe, on both the strategy and build work.
The data strategy and the methods for creating it are now tools that Health Integrated can rely upon to update their technology roadmap over time in response to business changes, allowing the company to address new opportunities, new competitors, and new challenges.

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