Written By: Ashley M. Scott (Guest Writer)
As we evolve into a data-driven society, cultural and technological improvements are impacting how data supports more objective decision-making in public health initiatives. In the same way, higher education administrators are incorporating data analytics to drive change and support improvements in medical curriculums.
What is Data Analytics?
Data Analytics is the process of examining raw data sets, uncovering patterns, and extracting valuable insights to formulate conclusions. Traditional data management tools include Excel spreadsheets and manual record-keeping managed by a person or team. According to a recent article, “healthcare organizations have seen an explosive health data growth rate of 878 percent since 2016, according to statistics compiled by Dell EMC” (Donovan, 2016). With the increase of data, analysts are looking to integrate machine learning algorithms, automation, and other capabilities to protect and meet the data demand.
How Does Data Enhance Medical Education?
Today, medical schools are using their data to better understand their students’ needs, evaluate their strategies, boost academic performance, and improve their bottom line.
Data is commonly categorized in two ways: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative refers to the quantity or amount of a specific item; it is a numerical value. Qualitative refers to quality traits that do not include numerical values such as color, shape, or texture. In academia, datasets can include information such as instructors’ names, student GPA scores, class sizes, and more. When used strategically, data reports can shed light on trends over time in specific areas including,
1. Evaluating instructor performance
In 2012, the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project released by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation showed that student surveys served as a valid method of measuring teaching effectiveness (Mercer-Golden, 2016). Shortly after, more medical schools began distributing evaluation surveys to students at the end of their classes and hospital clinical rotations.
The survey can often take up to 5 minutes to complete and consist of open-ended and multiple choice questions. The survey composition is critical to enhancing educational outcomes because students’ feedback provides insight into their learning experience. Several biases can arise if the survey questions are written misleadingly or confusingly, which can lead to inaccurate and skewed data results due to poor analyses.
Ultimately, institutions can identify if their instructors are motivating students to perform at their best and hold them accountable to accomplish specific learning objectives. In return, this analysis can provide direct insight to what students value in their experience, predict their preparedness for hospital rotations, and explore ways to enhance academic performance in the classroom.
2. Improving and developing class curriculums
In recent years, innovations in education introduced learning styles such as small group sessions, peer review activities, hybrid learning, and timed learning challenges. Such modifications are considered successful when data reports indicate that the majority of students prefer this technique or perform better in courses when they apply their knowledge and skills outside the classroom.
3. Keeping track of student attendance and pass rates
At-risk students are students who fail more than one course and are therefore at a higher risk of being put on academic probation. Data collection of student learning metrics helps identify these students, deliver academic support services, and reduce their chances of struggling in their coursework.
4. Alternative Testing Options
Most online assessments are supported by a cloud-based platform or type of machine learning service. This alternative option is helpful to grade assignments and exams faster and more accurately than a human. It may require some input from a human being, but the results will have higher validity and reliability. In addition, this helps to tag specific questions to course learning outcomes, track students’ performance, and identify at-risk students.
5. Adaptive Learning
Adaptive learning modifies teaching methods by analyzing student performance in real time. This is executed with machine learning techniques that adjust to each student’s learning styles from the traditional learning method. New upgrades include pretest tools that identify a learner’s current position and return personalized suggestions to strengthen comprehension skills.
How Data is Bridging Medical Education and Patient Satisfaction
One of the strongest determinants of a medical doctor’s education is the level of empathy and quality of care they provide to patients.
So how can medical educators ensure that their curriculum is training doctors who are meeting the patient’s level of satisfaction?
The answer: improvements in data collection and advancements in technology.
If you ever made an appointment to see a healthcare provider online, filled out paperwork at the doctor’s office, or completed a questionnaire after your visit, you have contributed to the “big data” revolution in healthcare. Given that this data is daily generated across departments, it is commonly referred to as “big data” due to its complexity and large size. To easily digest this “big data,” field experts categorize them into four dimensions: volume, variety, velocity and veracity.
Volume: How much data is there?
Variety: What are the different types of data?
Velocity: How quickly is the data being created?
Veracity: Can we trust the data?
This is a critical step that supports the data cleanup and extraction process for meaningful insight. For example, hospital administrators often want to know how well their patient satisfaction rating is or how they can improve in the future. Data analytic techniques can help stakeholders understand how well the data aligns with the organization’s primary goals. Generally, key findings have revealed
More patients rely on online physician reviews before choosing a healthcare provider.
While it is natural to worry about negative reviews, patients are more likely to be swayed by increasing reports of quality care delivery.
It is important that providers focus on delivering high-quality care and building patient satisfaction.
Advancements in Data Technology: Patient Visits
Patient portal applications offer patients more flexibility to access their medical information, schedule appointments, and request online services with a digital assistant. With registration kiosks, the wait time for check-in can be reduced; patients are only redirected to front-desk personnel when necessary.
With more options for patients to get access to their medical providers, virtual visits such as Telehealth have become an attractive alternative to in-person visits. Telehealth uses big data to improve existing healthcare centers to benefit patients and medical providers. These virtual visits can help minimize patients’, and others’, exposure to potentially contagious viruses in public places like doctors' offices and waiting rooms, which is helpful to consider during a pandemic.
Remote patient monitoring tracks patient health such as vital stats (blood pressure, heart rate, etc.) to ensure physicians are constantly updated about the patient’s health status. This is helpful in the early detection of anomalies and reducing unnecessary doctor and hospital visits.
Cloud computing and specialist outreach allow patient data to be remotely accessed, which can allow patients to schedule an appointment with someone in a different location.
The Future of Data in Medical Education: Virtual Reality
Virtual reality (VR) is an immersive, three-dimensional, computer-generated environment where users can interact in a realistic manner using special electronic sensors. In recent years, this type of technology has been commonly used in the gaming and entertainment industries. Today, it is making an impact on medical education and the future of providing high quality, remote medical care. By bridging the educational and technical gap, VR has the potential to recreate a virtual, yet authentic emergency scenario numerous times. VR would allow instructors to render simulations that are significantly more true to life than those in limited in-class practices and peer learning via video tutorials/conferencing, online whiteboards, and other multimedia platforms.
The moving forces in data analytics, medical education, and technological advances are critical to supporting public health initiatives and improving outcomes in the healthcare system. Moreover, this rapid change is expected to impact government policies, medical care, and health providers, enhance medical education, and improve patient satisfaction.
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