Big Data for the Sustainability of Healthcare Project Financing

Roberto Moro Visconti,Donato Morea

doi:10.3390/su11133748

Roberto Moro Visconti, Donato Morea

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su11133748

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Abstract

This study aims to detect if and how big data can improve the quality and timeliness of information in infrastructural healthcare Project Finance (PF) investments, making them more sustainable, and increasing their overall efficiency. Interactions with telemedicine or disease management and prediction are promising but are still underexploited. However, given rising health expenditure and shrinking budgets, data-driven cost-cutting is inevitably required. An interdisciplinary approach combines complementary aspects concerning big data, healthcare information technology, and PF investments. The methodology is based on a business plan of a standard healthcare Public-Private Partnership (PPP) investment, compared with a big data-driven business model that incorporates predictive analytics in different scenarios. When Public and Private Partners interact through networking big data and interoperable databases, they boost value co-creation, improving Value for Money and reducing risk. Big data can also help by shortening supply chain steps, expanding economic marginality and easing the sustainable planning of smart healthcare investments. Flexibility, driven by timely big data feedbacks, contributes to reducing the intrinsic rigidity of long-termed PF healthcare investments. Healthcare is a highly networked and systemic industry, that can benefit from interacting with big data that provide timely feedbacks for continuous business model re-engineering, reducing the distance between forecasts and actual occurrences. Risk shrinks and sustainability is fostered, together with the bankability of the infrastructural investment.

Highlights

While big data on Public Health are growing with the diffusion of telemedicine and e-health, and more generally with that of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and networking digital platforms, their relationship with healthcare infrastructural investments is still pioneering [1].Digitalized data already provide many benefits to healthcare organizations through disease prediction and surveillance, population health management and patient care improvement
The sensitivity analysis on a standard healthcare Project Finance (PF) investment shows that big data can have a remarkable impact on the economic and financial parameters of the business plan
The information improves in quality, quantity, and readiness, reducing asymmetries among stakeholders and making their interests more convergent. This is the first study that considers the impact of big data on healthcare PF

Summary

Introduction

While big data on Public Health are growing with the diffusion of telemedicine and e-health, and more generally with that of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and networking digital platforms, their relationship with healthcare infrastructural investments is still pioneering [1]. Digitalized data already provide many benefits to healthcare organizations through disease prediction and surveillance, population health management and patient care improvement. For standard mobile-health (m-health) operations, and for healthcare investments [3]. Those investments need to match growing expenses, due to aging population trends, with public budget constraints: the importance of big data-driven cost savings [4]. Big data represent an essential source of information for healthcare Project Finance (PF) investments and their data-driven business plans, whose input data increasingly depend on timely and massive information [5]

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