Healthcare Data Exchange: SaaS Product Proposal
Healthcare data exchange refers to the sharing of patient health information between various stakeholders, including payers (insurance companies), life sciences (pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies), and providers (doctors, hospitals, and clinics).
The aim is to improve patient care and outcomes by providing authorized stakeholders access to a patient’s comprehensive health record, regardless of where the information was originally generated or stored.
Healthcare data can be exchanged through various means, such as electronic health records (EHRs), health information exchanges (HIEs), or direct secure messaging.
Healthcare data exchange faces several pain points, including:
Current Exchange Methods
The current methods of data exchange in healthcare, such as SFTP, ETL, and email, have limitations and are not ideal for large-scale data exchange.:
- SFTP can be complex and time-consuming for vendors to set up, as they need to understand the metadata and structure of the data before they can adequately transfer it.
- ETL can be expensive and time-consuming, as it requires a lot of manual effort and technical expertise to extract, transform, and load data from one system to another.
- Sending large amounts of data via email is not secure and unreliable, as email systems are not designed to handle such large amounts of data. Additionally, sending data via email can result in data loss or corruption due to issues such as file size limitations and email filtering.
These limitations highlight the need for more efficient, secure, and scalable healthcare data exchange methods, such as using APIs and cloud-based solutions.
Competitive Landscape
The competitive landscape is constantly evolving, with new entrants and partnerships emerging and consolidation through mergers and acquisitions.
The key factors driving success in the healthcare data exchange market include the ability to effectively manage and exchange data, secure data privacy, and security, and comply with industry regulations and standards.
Interesting companies are tackling the healthcare data sharing complexity; however, they face limitations such as cost, scalability, and extensibility.
The high cost of healthcare data-sharing solutions can limit their adoption by healthcare providers, especially smaller organizations with limited budgets.
Additionally, many provider systems have legacy infrastructure that can be difficult to integrate with new solutions, leading to increased IT resource costs. These challenges make it challenging for healthcare providers to fully realize the benefits of data sharing, such as improved patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs.
To address these challenges, the healthcare data exchange solution should be cost-effective while maintaining security, scalability, and extensibility.
Proposal
The two key components of the proposal are —
- SaaS Platform to drive the growth loop
- Snowflake Data Sharing platform for cost-effective information access
SaaS Platform
A SaaS platform can provide a standardized and centralized platform for healthcare data exchange, reducing the complexity and customization required for each healthcare organization and system. Healthcare providers can benefit from a SaaS solution with lower costs, improved security, and increased scalability compared to ad-hoc solutions. It is envisioned that a plug-n-play SaaS platform with the below vital capabilities will drive the growth of the proposed data exchange solution —
- Plug-n-play integrations of all data sources (Clinical, Claims, CRM) for hospital systems
- Shared data model standardized across multiple 3P companies within a category (for ex: CRM)
- Unified API for the data consumers
Snowflake Data Sharing
Hospital systems are increasingly adopting Snowflake’s data warehouse solution for storing patient information. Leveraging Snowflake’s native “Secure Data Sharing” solution will dramatically reduce the cost for the reasons below —
- Secure Data Sharing ensures that no actual data is transferred or copied between accounts. Instead, it utilizes Snowflake’s services layer and metadata store for all data sharing. The shared data does not occupy any storage space in the consumer’s account; hence it does not increase the monthly data storage charges for the consumer. The only costs for consumers are related to the compute resources (e.g. virtual warehouses) utilized for querying the shared data.
- There is no need for the data consumer to have a Snowflake account. If you’re a data provider and would like to share data with someone who doesn’t have a Snowflake account or isn’t ready to be a licensed Snowflake customer, you can create reader accounts. This reader accounts offer a user-friendly, cost-effective method for data sharing without requiring the recipient to sign up as a Snowflake customer.
- Secure Data Sharing platform allows you to regulate and govern access to your data when sharing it within your organization or externally with suppliers, partners, or customers. It does this by:
* Controlling membership
* Allowing for the management of access to data through custom and tailored listings
* Keeping track of data usage through auditing
* Implementing security measures to protect your data
Conclusion
In conclusion, a Snowflake-focused SaaS solution will tackle the limitations in cost, scalability, and extensibility present in current solutions, thus enabling healthcare providers to fully reap the benefits of data sharing, such as enhanced patient outcomes and decreased healthcare expenses.
