Data and analytics advancements empower outcomes focus in healthcare, says Bayer Digital Officer Jessica Federer

Big data will move to the centre of treatment in healthcare, claims Bayer chief digital officer

The digital revolution has the potential to "change everything" about how value is measured in healthcare.

That's according to Jessica Federer, the digital officer at Bayer, one of the largest global innovators in human, animal and plant health, speaking in a keynote at the Open Mobile Summit in London this morning.

"It touches every part of our business," she told Computing about the impact of advancements in the collection and utilization of data in the healthcare industry. Bayer has over 110,000 employees and a global revenue of €40bn.

Essentially, the use of big data analysis and other computational techniques holds the promise of enabling more targeted treatments and better outcomes.

"Before, as a chemical company, value was generated solely the products. Now the value is still generated by that product, but the we can measure the outcomes and results in ways that simply weren't possible before," said Federer.

"In the US - and here in the UK as well - there is already a big push to move to outcomes-based reimbursement," she explained.

"An example of this is the heart-failure readmission measure introduced by CMS in the USA. Hospitals must report heart-failure readmission rates and the results impact their reimbursement."

Federer explained how advancements in data collection and use are having an impact across human, animal and plant health, making this a historic time to be in the life-sciences industry.

She described how Bayer has always relied on data and analytics in developing new medicines, because "data from experiments fuel innovation."

But she says that the digital revolution in the life-sciences is exciting because it enables companies to make existing products work better.

"Now, we have the ability to see what was previously unseen through technological advancements in how data is collected and utilized. We have the opportunity to better predictive modeling, monitoring, and advanced analytics to help more people," she explained.

"It takes around ten years and over a billion dollars to develop a new prescription medicine, and if digitalization can improve how that medicine works for someone, or how they take that medicine, then everyone benefits. Instead of giving a treatment to someone who might not respond as well, or who may have side effects, we could get it to the person that will actually benefit from it," she said.

"As we often hear, the digital future is already here, it's just not well-distributed yet. Society now has the opportunity to use technological advancements to benefit more people around the world," Federer concluded.