Getting Personal with Data

Getting Personal with Data

Frustrated with overflowing waiting rooms, appointments running behind schedule and impersonal and often rushed doctor appointments, I found myself asking is there a better approach to managing my healthcare needs? And earlier this year I found an answer that is working for me, concierge medicine. Concierge medicine is a pioneering model of medical practice that puts the patient at the heart of the healthcare experience; under a concierge-style practice, patients pay a monthly or annual subscription fee and in return receive personalized, attentive health care through one appointed, dedicated physician who is familiar with their medical history.

Concierge medicine is geared to the personalized convenience for patients and gaining traction as we as patients look for a way to bypass the red tape of insurance companies, shorten our wait times and other inconveniences that may accompany a visit to a traditional doctor. On the providers’ side, doctors have joined concierge groups to avoid the long hours, endless paperwork and the high overhead costs associated with an understaffed and often underpaid practice. Longer appointment times, same-day visits and round-the-clock access to their doctor whether in person, phone, text or Skype are part of the concierge-style practice.

The combination of technology, data, information transparency, and consumer frustration has set the stage for an evolution in the healthcare model and puts the patient first and at the center of the medical care delivery experience.

It’s Personal

Health care is personal. And with the recent explosion of genomic data available, the concept of “personalization” is taking on a new meaning, charting a new course to improve one’s health. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) describes precision medicine as “an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person.” These unique data points have given the medical industry incredible amounts of information with the ability to analyze the data and offer meaningful insights into one’s health. Our DNA plays a significant role in the risk of disease and severity, and which treatment we will respond to best with the least amount of side effects. In a recent article, Eric Dishman shared how the kidney cancer he’d been diagnosed with in college had caught up to him two decades later. His kidneys had failed, and the chemo drug that kept him alive was incompatible with dialysis. A friend happened to work for a DNA sequencing company and offered to analyze the genome of Dishman’s cancer cells. Days before he was to start dialy­sis, his doctors called. Dishman’s kidney cancer mutations looked like they actually belonged to a form of pancreatic cancer. He switched to a drug designed for tumors in a totally different organ. It worked. Dishman is finally cancer-free after more than 20 years — and, following a successful kidney transplant, he now heads the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program at the National Institutes of Health. Leveraging the insights this data provides is where the next phase of personalized medicine is heading.

“Welcome to you.”

The largest consumer genetic testing company, 23andMe, says it now has more than two million genotyped customers. The FDA allows 23andMe to market tests that assess genetic risks for ten diseases or conditions including Parkinson’s disease, Celiac disease, and Late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. This past holiday season, The 23andMe DNA Test kit was one of Amazon’s five best-selling items on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

With the combination of data and technology, there is evidence that the digitization of healthcare is already saving lives with the possibility to save thousands. A recent example is how the Apple Watch saved Scott Killian’s life.Scott Killian’s Apple Watch woke him up around 1 am with an alert from a third-party app called HeartWatch saying his resting heart rate was elevated while sleeping. His Apple Watch charted his heart rate at around 121 beats per minute in the middle of the night while data previously captured showed his average resting heart rate at about 49 beats per minute. The data also showed that this was the first time his resting heart rate had reached this level since he began wearing Apple Watch, so he decided to go to the emergency room as a precaution. The hospital took a blood test and discovered an elevated enzyme that signals a heart attack has occurred or is occurring. Further testing revealed four blocked arteries which required the insertion of four stents (inflated titanium carbon fiber sleeves) to correct.

90% of the data on the internet has been created since 2016

According to an IBM Marketing Cloud study, 90% of the data on the internet has been created since 2016. This is not surprising with an estimated 3.8 billion internet users in the first quarter of 2017!

The internet continues to grow quickly while generating massive amounts of data. In just one internet minute in 2017 :

120 New LinkedIn accounts created

3.5 million Google searches

342,000 Apps downloaded

16 million text messages sent

2 million minutes of calls done by Skype users

800,000+ files uploaded on DropBox

Amazon processed $373 MILLION in sales every day in 2017

There are more mobile Internet users than desktop Internet users. There were approximately 3.5 billion global mobile Internet users as at August 2017.

The e-commerce industry is responsible for about $2 trillion in annual sales

Mobile commerce revenue was $170 billion in 2016, and it is estimated to be $694 billion by 2019

Mobile traffic is responsible for 52% of internet traffic

By 2020, 75% of cars will come with built-in IoT connectivity

Wholesale Used Vehicle Auctions

Today, with the power of data and analytics combined with digitization, there is tremendous opportunity to create strategies that will reduce depreciation and holding cost(s) while maximizing value for consignors. These insights help consignors get a better understanding of how their portfolio is performing down to the VIN-specific details and what they should do with it — extend it, pull it forward, move it somewhere — so they can take advantage of the best market opportunities. A digital wholesale vehicle auction in conjunction with a physical auction and integrated with data and Analytics creates a seamless integrated auction experience that helps buyers and sellers make informed decisions in vehicle remarketing.