Advances in technology, not to mention government mandates, are forcing healthcare to take analytics seriously. Here's a look at the current (and future) analytics landscape in healthcare, along with 10 real use cases of analytics in action. Though many healthcare organizations still regard analytics as a “rather leisurely activity” focused more on data and less on actual analytics, the sees healthcare “speeding up dramatically” in its adoption of analytics. Current technology makes it possible to create data, products and services — think analytics as a service — to help guide institutional decision-making.A recent outlined the state of analytics opportunities for healthcare and presented five case studies of big data in action. These five scenarios, plus five others, highlight what’s possible.More: Can Healthcare Big Data Reality Live Up to Its Promise?Express Scripts: Help Patients Manage MedsPatients filed more than 1.5 billion prescriptions annually with , a pharmacy benefit management organization. The company is using data about these transactions to drive both behavior change and process improvement, IIA notes. Patients may receive customized messaging about less expensive ways to refill prescriptions, for example. Meanwhile, Express Scripts’ predictive analytics can identify patients at the greatest risk of skipping or otherwise missing doses and then proactively intervene.More: Partners HealthCare: ‘Intelligence System for the EHR’The Boston-based system — which brings together Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, among others — is connecting its financial, operational and clinical analytics systems. To aid this effort, Partners has developed the Queriable Patient Inference Dossier, or QPID, which it describes as an “intelligence system for the EHR” that enables real-time queries, analytics and reports at the point of care (and in easy-to-read reports for administrative or executive staff). Roughly 5,000 physicians and other medical professionals currently use QPID, Partners says.Analysis: How Big Data Will Save Your LifeCigna: Analysis in ‘Onmi-channel Environment’Like UnitedHealthcare, insurer is also analyzing call center speech-to-text data in an effort to improve customer service. Beyond that, though, Cigna conducts analysis in what the IIA’s Davenport calls an “omni-channel environment” by looking at Web data and information from other external sources. The insurer is also testing, and then analyzing, disease management interventions that occur over the phone.Feature: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: Rules Engine Atop EHRAt the recent Strata Rx conference, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia demonstrated its Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBMi) Care Assistant. Built using the , the Care Assistant is a clinical decision support framework that uses 1,500 rules to search 200 variables to return recommendations to the hospital’s EHR users, CBMi Senior Programmer Jeremy Miller says. In an 8-month trial involving more than 1,500 premature newborns, clinicians using an advanced Care Assistant version were more likely to use the correct growth chart and development milestones, administer an vaccine and recommend a blood pressure screening before the baby’s first birthday. Tellingly, those using the rules engine wouldn’t give it up after the trial, Miller says. SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe