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Last updated on March 16, 2016

Location Analytics In Health Care: A Bigger Deal Than You May Think

By Analytics8

Location analytics expert responds to Tech Target article analyzing a recent study published by Dresner Advisory Services.

TechTarget’s Senior News Writer, Nicole Laskowski wrote an article recently that provides a great high level and brief discussion of the emergence and importance of Location Intelligence. I definitely suggest checking it out. Location Analytics continues to climb the importance ladder for businesses. In the article she referenced Location Intelligence Market Study published in January 2016 by Dresner Advisory Services. She pointed out that only 40% of survey takers from health care said that location intelligence is either critically important or very important to their company. However, that percentage may be misleading to most readers. I’ve actually seen a much higher adaptation rate of location intelligence within the health care industry.

Some of the key use cases for organizations in health care are:

  1. Sales territory analytics for pharmaceuticals
  2. Alignment and location of retail health care service providers with patients and consumers featuring the use of population demographics, lifestyle segmentation, and insurance availability
  3. Hot-spotting and other geospatial techniques for mediating the issues of high re-admittance rates for hospitals.
In fact health care is one industry that can be characterized by the convergence of key location intelligence factors:
  • service providers
  • consumers of these services
  • fixed (and mobile) assets of both service providers and consumers
When any industry possesses these 3 location intelligence factors as key operational success factors or business drivers, we have the greatest opportunities for deploying location intelligence for BI. In a recent webinar put on by QlikMaps, we talked about unexpected ways to use location analytics.  Hospital network planning is one of those unexpected ways.

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Key Takeaways

  • Location Intelligence is gaining importance across industries, with particular relevance in healthcare despite modest survey results suggesting otherwise.
  • Healthcare organizations are using location analytics for pharmaceutical sales territory planning, aligning services with patient demographics, and addressing hospital readmission rates.
  • The convergence of service providers, service consumers, and physical assets makes healthcare a prime candidate for Location Intelligence applications.
  • Location analytics enables strategic insights for hospital network planning and other unexpected but impactful use cases.
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Analytics8 is a data and analytics consultancy. We help companies translate their data into meaningful and actionable information so they can stay ahead in a rapidly changing world.  

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