Yale New Haven Health System

Philip Corso

Clinical Intelligence Leader

Philip Corso is the executive director of enterprise data and analytics at Yale New Haven Health. He works with internal customers using data warehousing, collection, analysis, interpretation, and reporting tools to contribute to broader strategic objectives, like cost efficiencies, productivity, process improvements, lean operations, and business development.

In an interview with Healthcare Tech Outlook, Corso illuminates the effect of analytics in the healthcare industry and how it is helping build quality healthcare assistance.

What are some significant challenges in the healthcare analytics space today?

One of the most prominent challenges is handling the enormous amount of data collected in electronic medical records (EMR). The incoming data must be refined, interpreted, and developed into meaningful sentences to deliver credible information. In addition, the data needs to be democratized for transparency and accountability. The large amount of incoherent data accumulating within the EMR creates a possibility of obtaining differing results for identical metrics, resulting in unreliable information. Analysts need to take a cautious approach to prevent the formation of competing metric definitions from the sources and build a single source of truth (SSOT) architecture.

What measures do you follow to ensure a streamlined process in the healthcare analytics field?

Adopting a well-structured point-of-entry system is key to establishing consistency and accuracy in data analysis. This centralized system allows our management team to review all the requests comprehensively. Through daily audits, we prioritize approving the requests and guarding against potential pitfalls when interpreting different metrics.

Our analytics group unifies all the metrics and reports across the organization, treating all the data uniformly and ensuring no contradictory results are emitted for identical metrics. The process we follow empowers frontline staff and leaders with up-to-date information, improving the overall quality of healthcare.

Is there a project initiative you’ve recently been part of where you helped implement a particular trend?

We are observing an enterprise-wide trend as we strive to regain our financial health post-pandemic, where all the entities tend to look into the data together under a single federated data model. This approach enables seamless information sharing across all networks, allowing every leader to access the data simultaneously. In addition, we pay attention to creating SSOT systems and metric definition catalogs for data warehouse modeling to aid in the future procurement of data. But its success depends on active engagement from all key stakeholders who validate and approve the data we collect.

“The thirst for data grows as time goes on, particularly with the emergence of AI and machine learning. Data democratization will dominate the healthcare analytics space and enable more customers to access the data.”

How do you envision the future of the healthcare analytics space?

The thirst for data grows as time goes on, particularly with the emergence of AI and machine learning. Data democratization will dominate the healthcare analytics space and enable more customers to access the data. We have established ourselves as a trustworthy source of information for frontline staff and clinical program directors. In the foreseeable future, analysts will focus on curating and maintaining comprehensive data repositories that are easily accessible to customers. Democratization of data will empower users to explore and draw insights independently. This eliminates the dependency on analysts and minimizes the waiting period for the requested data.

With a strong foundation and the right tools backing the data, the new data democracy model will allow all stakeholders to analyze and derive value from the data without requiring an IT or computer background. The vision is to make accessing and utilizing data as simple as drag and drop, enabling users to create custom reports and effortlessly extract the necessary information.

What would be your advice to your colleagues and peers?

My work’s ability to effect change in patient experience and healthcare quality brings me ample satisfaction. It is essential to stay cautious while welcoming new trends as technology changes rapidly. Instead, stay true to your beliefs, and don't get caught up in the pressure to embrace all emerging trends and technologies. Often, the tried and tested methods offer the best results. If done well, analytics can be an exciting and rewarding field with the power to impact patients' lives.