5.1 Data analytics in healthcare

Data analytics offers the benefit of examining large amounts of data efficiently, facilitating data collection and sharing and identifying concealed patterns in datasets. The advancement of technologies and the internet has made available to healthcare professionals a plethora of data sources and information from various systems and platforms (Guo & Chen, 2023; WHO, 2021). These data can subsequently provide real life and timely information to facilitate clinical decisions and provide high-quality care to patients.

In healthcare, there is a vast amount of medical data of patients and systems that can be carefully analysed to lead to better diagnosis and treatment if used correctly and accurately. With the increase of electronic medical records (EMRs) in health organisations and integration with various platforms and healthcare systems in primary and secondary healthcare settings, it is likely that healthcare organisations will transition to a proactive approach for managing patients given the ease of availability of real-time patient information and hence the potential to change the model of care (Guo & Chen, 2023).