Framework Implementation for Data Integration and Data Analytics Applying technology for evidence-based decision making

Abstract

Healthcare services are vital components of society. With the passage of time healthcare services have transformed themselves into distinct entities by embedding several vertical siloed functions under their umbrella e.g. Pathological services, counsellor services, testing laboratories, and dietician services and the list is growing as medical science and technology gallops along. Each of these functions generates its own data set. However, practitioners in healthcare services are required to make decisions based on these data sets which act as evidence. The process of making decisions based on this evidence poses its own set of issues and challenges such as not having access to integrated data and the quality of data. In addition, to these issues and challenges, another equally important concern that is frequently observed is seeking the answer to the question: Can technological advancements assist practitioners in making evidence-based decisions? Can technology assist practitioners in performing data analytics operations? For, decision-making in healthcare services requires access to current descriptive data which must be integrated from different units, and also the ability of this integrated data to demonstrate future trends and patterns so as to eliminate the possibility of making wrong decisions are eliminated or minimized. It is in response to these issues and challenges this research paper is developed by the authors. The research paper thus seeks to link theoretical concepts with the practical implementation of technology to assist practitioners in the process of making decisions and providing solutions to the above issues, challenges, and questions posed by healthcare practitioners. The focus of the paper is on the integration of the data set and on the practical scenario of how to link the theoretical perspectives to the practical form of the working framework. The development of the framework is compared in parallel to the software development life cycle approach. This is done so as to provide a concrete technology-based healthcare system that will operate on integrated data which is stored in a database from where data analytics functions are performed which will assist the decision-makers. In other words, the approach of the paper takes into consideration the various frameworks, identified in the literature review, links them to the software development life cycle, stores integrated data, and hence enable the decision-makers to make decision-based on evidence. The managerial implications demonstrated by this paper include the following (a) demonstration of a practical approach to the process of developing an integrated system by means of a work breakdown structure.