Business Intelligence in Hospitals: Current Users’ Perspective and Anticipated Future Trends

Abstract

Introduction: A hospital cannot work in isolation; it has to adjust to the changing needs of the patients and the environment. Business Intelligence is a technology to manage raw data and convert it into meaningful information which can support better decision making and add enormous value to the business. Aim: The study was aimed at understanding thecurrent user perspective regarding BI in hospital and to predict thefuture trends in the field of Business Intelligence in hospitals. Material and Methods: The study is a mixed method study. The research design was descriptive which intended to understand the current user perspective about BI (Business Intelligence) application in hospitals. The study of anticipated future trends has been done through quantitative methods. 50 respondents from the top management of hospitals participated in the study. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data on future trends Results: BI system did help administrators in analysing the information integrated from various sources, thus helping and supporting the decision making. The administrators also showed confidence in the system and championed the fact that it would improve the quality of management decisions by providing on the fly accurate and meaningful information. As far as the future trends are concerned the data showed a definitive positive growth in this domain and dramatic growth is expected in the demand for mobile BI. (write about statistic analysis) Conclusion: In absence of a system which can integrate, analyze and derive meaningful insights from the data, the hospitals will continue to be rich in data but poor in information. They can improve their performance by looking at their own data. Hospitals now need to move from descriptive analytics to predictive and prescriptive analysis which is a step ahead tells us about what we should do.